August 20, 2025 • 82 mins
Germany's Ryes, with Napoleon's Help
Thank you to Bastian for entering the whiskey ring!
_________________________________________________________
If you haven’t joined the Patreon community yet, please consider doing so at patreon.com/whiskeyinmyweddingring
The Bottle Share Club - the $25/month Patreon level - is SOLD OUT! You can still support the podcast for as little as $1/month, and $5/month patrons will have first dibs if a $25/month member retires.
If you haven’t yet, please follow Whiskey in my Wedding Ring and the Whiskey Ring Podcast on Instagram and Facebook.
Stork Club Distillery
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
David Levine (00:00):
Hey folks, welcome to a new episode of The
whiskering Podcast. Today we aregoing back over to Germany. We
have only visited Germany onceon this podcast, and it was
quite a while ago. So I'mthrilled to have on Bastion
Heuser from stork club,distillery. You also know them
as stork house in the US. We'llget to that a little bit later.
As to why there are two namesfor that. But for now, Bastian,
welcome on.
Bastian Heuser (00:22):
Thank you, David, for your invitation.
Happy to be here,
David Levine (00:25):
absolutely and before I forget. Thank you also
to Georgie Bell, who's onepisode 191 with the heart cut,
for making this introduction.Very appreciative of it, and for
other introductions she's madethat will bear fruit down the
line. So let's start where wealways start. Just to give some
context, sorry, did you hearthat? Yeah, okay, one second. No
Bastian Heuser (00:48):
worries.
David Levine (00:55):
My daughter just turned one and she's going out.
Unknown (00:59):
So awesome, awesome. Yeah. So anyway, we'll jump in.
Bastian Heuser (01:07):
Oh, that's, that's just, that's just life,
you know exactly the other way.So
David Levine (01:11):
let's start where we always start, and just give a
little context for where we'regoing to be talking about today.
I'll throw it over to you forthe origin story of stork club.
Yeah.
Bastian Heuser (01:25):
My name is Bastian. I'm one of the three
founders of store club, ryewhiskey distillery, yeah, just
about an hour south of Berlin,our beautiful capital, and we
became distillers, whiskeydistillers, whiskey producers,
(01:46):
actually by chance. Well, aboutnine and a half 1010, almost 10
years ago, we actually wanted tobuy a cask of whiskey to to make
some presents for our clients,we had an marketing and
distribution agency for thedrinks industry so focused on on
(02:11):
drinks at that point already.And yeah, I wanted to send them
a small little bottle of whiskeythat we wanted to finish certain
ways and thank them for for thebusiness. And through that, we
came in touch with a distilleryowner, as I said, about one hour
(02:33):
south of Berlin, in a biospherereserve, and he told us that he
is looking for someone to takeover the distillery because he
had a bad accident and was 67 atthat point, and wanted to, yeah,
basically, take, take hispension and leave the business.
(02:59):
And so when we talked to him, wekind of, yeah, we fell in love
with the place, and said, Well,we would know someone who could
take over this theory. And yeah,that basically made us actually,
(03:22):
it went fairly quickly sixmonths later, I guess, yeah, six
months later, we were the ownerof a small distillery producing
whiskey, mostly single malt,only minor amounts of rice since
about 2004 and yeah, nobackground in distilling, no
(03:48):
background in brewing, what haveyou. But we, yeah, we, we've
always been drinking quite alot. So I guess that that was a
good training taking overdistillery. And from then on,
yeah, we totally Yeah. We putall, put all, put it, put
(04:14):
everything on that one card, andinvested heavily and and soon
after, turned the distilleryinto a rye whiskey only
distillery, yeah, for forseveral reasons, which we'll
probably come to later on, butthat basically just kind of is a
(04:37):
quick run through the beginningsof stock lock rye whiskey.
David Levine (04:44):
And just for, I guess we'll address it quickly,
there's stork club rye whiskey,and in the US it is stork house.
So just for people who might seestork house on the shelves in
the US, can you explain thereasons why?
Bastian Heuser (04:58):
Yeah, of course, of course. So. So the distillery
had a different name when wetook over and but our biosphere
is very famous for the all offor the stocks that come every
year from the South to nest hereand breed in our area. So lots
(05:19):
of storks. And we always foundthat, you know, stock, the stock
is a lovely kind of bird, onlybreeds in very, how do you say,
in very good nature, and isbasically a sign of, of all, all
(05:41):
things positive. So we said,okay, let's, let's dig in to
our, what could we name? Andthen it's, you know, it's three
founders, club of stocks, youknow, three, three people is a
club, almost. And hence, thenstore club. And we registered
(06:02):
the trademark, and that was nota problem in Europe, but when we
approached trademark in the US,which we already knew would be,
probably tricky, we were notable to because there was a
famous nightclub in New York inthe 1920s a guy named
(06:27):
Billingsley run this club, andit must have been the most
famous nightclub duringProhibition In New York. And the
predecessors of this guy, theystill own the trademark stock
club in the US don't really doanything with it. But then we
(06:50):
said, Okay, we have to kind oftake something else. The stock
should be in there. So it's astock house. That's why we have
those two trademarks
David Levine (07:03):
Gotcha. So the as you said, I mean, this vision
came together very quickly, iflike, you went to the distillery
for one purpose. Six monthslater you had it, and then went
from there. I do want to know,like this distillery that you
found had won numerous awardsfor seeing them all beforehand.
It was very fun. I don't knowhow well known it was in terms
(07:26):
of notoriety, but it was wellknown for its quality. Let's put
it that way, right? So you know,you meet the owner. He's ready
to retire for the reasons yououtlined earlier. What kind of
deter what made thedetermination for you to say,
All right, this is really wellknown for single malt. We could
just take over this distillery,but we want to change it to rye.
Bastian Heuser (07:49):
Yeah, it was basically when we took over. And
as I said, we were completelyself taught, so one of us
actually had to teach himselfdistilling, which wasn't me, but
my partner, Stefan, who at thatpoint said, Okay, I need to know
how things run here. And he wentright into it, with the help of
(08:16):
our network and some friends,befriended brewers and
distillers and basically learnedeverything. First of all, just
kind of making, what was be,what was made here anyways, so
single malt whiskey primarily,but we've always been not your
(08:40):
typical, traditional single maltwhiskey drinker. We've always
had much more fun with Americanwhiskeys, with whiskies from
other countries using othergrains and in drinking, not in
making. So we said, Okay, is itus when we kind of go further
(09:09):
and keep on producing singlemode? Is that really us, or is
it not really us? And we quicklysaid, Okay, actually, actually,
we come from a bar background.We've been bartenders for a long
time. We've always had a lovefor Ryan burn whiskeys and and
it's been a at that point, like10 years ago, it was still a
(09:34):
niche. It sort of still is, butit was a niche. Then we said,
Okay, well, if we do ryewhiskey, actually, it also takes
us out of the sheer compareability with, you know, you're
always being compared with 15year old Scotch whiskey or 20
(09:58):
year old Irish which is. Wasjust hard. So then we said,
Okay, if we, if we take someother grain, we're kind of out
of that and and then in the end,so we had this bar background.
We always loved Ryan Bermanwhiskey. We saw the niche, the
(10:21):
growing niche, of rye whiskey,and then we talked to farmers
here, and they basically toldus, I mean, guys, you're,
you're, you're starting overhere. And actually, the grain
that we grow here is rye. It'sour predominant grain, and
that's not because we have avery good soil, but we have very
(10:44):
bad soil, actually, very, verysandy soils. Here. It's very dry
area and and it's a winter harshgrain. So it's, you can
basically so out before thewinter comes. And therefore,
(11:05):
because we had harsh winters inthe past, therefore the farmers
always grew right here. And wesaid, Okay, well now, I mean, we
have that local grain, and thenour history and our our favorite
whiskey style will go for eyewhiskey. We want to be, be we
(11:27):
want to concentrate on one thingand do that really good, instead
of having, you know, severalstyles, especially with our
lacking of distillingbackground. And you know, we had
to master that one thing first,and that was very important. So
yeah, about one year into takingover the distillery, we turned
(11:52):
everything off and wentcompletely into rye, as the
grain whiskies.
David Levine (11:59):
So the soil is saying it's basically good for
storks and for rye, but that'sabout it. So I do want to just
point something out for you knowto your credit, which is you
don't have you and your cofounder, Stefan and Sebastian,
don't have productionbackgrounds behind before
(12:20):
starting this, but you did allhave experience in and around
the beverage alcohol space. Soin addition to being, you know,
the casual drinkers and such,you also did have that
experience. This wasn't totallynew to you. It was more the just
the technical stuff that you hadto learn, which I think put you
at least a couple steps ahead ofsome people who just want to
start a distillery from scratch,
Bastian Heuser (12:42):
absolutely, absolutely that, and that has
been very, very helpful in termsof putting our, our whiskey on
some tables and into some bars,and Just in general, our our
network through our previousventures, was, was, of course,
(13:06):
helpful to to place the brand,but, but nonetheless, you know,
a brand can always only be asgood as it's, as the content in
the bottle, I would say, so. So,yeah, that's that's why we
really needed to to make somesome good, some good juice.
David Levine (13:29):
And for this podcast, Bastian and the stork
club slash stork House team weregracious enough to share two
bottles with me. I got to trythe store house straight, rye
risky and the stork house,foolproof. Rye, risky. Both. I
really enjoy both. And I wassurprised actually, at how much
(13:50):
about 20 proof points ofdifference could make in flavor.
Usually, I usually, if it'ssomething that's a higher proof
of something else, it's like,you know, it's just more
intense, it's more, just morepunch of the other version. But
in this it did feel like I couldsee the through line, but there
was a definite flavordifferential between them. You
got many different things comingout. And the 90 proof version,
(14:13):
honestly, was really impressive,not just for 90 proof, but in
addition, because it's 90 proof,having one of the best mouth
feels of a whiskey that I've hadat 100 proof or below this
entire year. So really greatstuff. And my first note when I
tried the stray rice whiskey,this is a 45% ABV, 90 proof, was
(14:35):
on the nose and the palate. Forthat matter, it tasted and
smelled like I knew this was arye, but it felt like it was a
new category of rye. And yes, Iknew it was a new country,
relatively new country for me,in the Rye style and all of
that, but it did feel different.So talking about the rye, well,
(14:58):
sorry, it's taken one step. Backas you are in a biosphere
reserve. So do you have any anylimitations put upon you as a
distiller, producer being in abiosphere reserve?
Bastian Heuser (15:14):
No, we actually don't have too many limitations
in our daily work. I think,what, what, what I like about
the idea of of the bios, morethe aging part. So, in
comparison to, you know, wecould have opened a whiskey
(15:35):
distillery in Berlin. But whenit, when I think of whiskey, I
always think of nature. And youknow, it's, it's off, off the
off the off the track. It'ssomewhere out in the countryside
where things are nice. And Ithink that that definitely is
(15:58):
something. I prefer whiskies tobe aged in a nice atmosphere.
And we're not not a lot of carsdrive and, you know, pollute the
the the air, apart from that,all the fields that we get our
(16:23):
grains from, they are partiallyin the biosphere, partially
outside of the biosphere, butall surrounding our distillery.
But we don't really have toomany limitations. We even take
the water from here. So yeah,
David Levine (16:40):
that's fantastic. I mean, the reason I asked we
we've spoken to a couple ofdistilleries that are in, for
example, the UK, in an area ofoutstanding natural beauty, or
in a national park or somethingequivalent, where there are
sometimes significantlimitations put upon you because
of some regulation or sometitle. But no, that's good. And
as you mentioned, you're able toreally focus on local barley.
(17:04):
It's, you know, it's on thewebsite. It's not as I was
looking through the website, aspart of the research, I was
thinking to myself that, youknow, the local barley is
mentioned on the homepage, thatyou get your barley from, as you
said, farmers surrounding you,
Bastian Heuser (17:17):
local, right? Local, right? I'm sorry, no,
we're so
David Levine (17:21):
trained to say barley, wow, yeah, sorry, I'm
sure thank you for that. So yes,local rye from from the farmers
around you who are in and out ofthe biosphere, but around you,
the are you able to get 100% ofyour rye from there?
Bastian Heuser (17:39):
And yes, we get, basically, we would be able to
get 100% of our production fromhere. But in the beginning, we
did a we did something. Weactually stopped doing it for a
couple of years, but webasically created two mesh
(18:03):
builds, 200% rye mesh builds,one is 100% unmalted Rye. That's
all from the area here. And wewanted to have one mesh build
from 100% malted rye, but therewas no Moultrie anywhere near
(18:24):
here, and so we had to switch toit's about 450, kilometers from
here. There is a specialMoultrie called viaman, which is
quite famous, that they dospecial malts. And they were
(18:45):
able to offer us severaldifferent types of rye malt,
which is all German malt, Germanrye malt, but not all from here,
from the area. And then westarted to distill these two
mesh bills separately, but in inactual numbers. In the beginning
(19:08):
we it was like the split was 70%unmalted Rye from the region and
30% malted rye. And by now it's,it's actually 100% unmalted Rye
because he stopped producing themalted rye mesh bill for several
(19:28):
reasons. And yeah, so nowadaysit's really 100% from the fields
surrounding the area.
David Levine (19:36):
It's beautiful. It's very so. So, so as I
mentioned, it's on the website,but it doesn't, I feel like you
don't lean into it too hard,like there's a point where you
go to but you're not like, whereyou're the flavor of
Brandenburg, where the flavor ofthe biosphere reserve, it's very
much. Okay. Yes, we get the ridelocally, and we produce it here,
(19:58):
and age is here, but we. It'slike the word terroir is not
anywhere on there or anythinglike that. So was that more of a
conscious decision to be like,we're going to let people still
enjoy it and not focus on thisparticular aspect?
Bastian Heuser (20:12):
Yeah, I think things like terroir and this
very, very in a positive way,we're very nerdy kind of view of
things. I think we just feltvery uncomfortable with it
because we, we were notdistillers for, you know, 30
(20:34):
years, and we said, Okay, Imean, it's, it's for obvious
reasons. You take the grain thatgrows around you. You don't need
a diploma for that. But, yeah,we, we, we didn't want to over
pronounce it. And, you know, we,we make whiskey from local rye,
(20:59):
from local water. But it's notto be our whiskey should, should
be fun, you know? It should beapproachable. It shouldn't be
too kind of nerdy. This, thatit's, yeah, as I said, we come
from bar background. We lovegreat cocktails, but it's it's
(21:23):
also about having fun in a bar.Not not only which vermouth you
use in the Manhattan, it's thepeople you drink it with.
They're more important for us.
David Levine (21:36):
So I want to pull up, I guess, to kind of a 30,000
foot view of whiskey in Germany,distilling in Germany. Just to
give Honestly, when I spoke tolast producer in Germany, we
didn't really focus too much onthat in particular, but it's
think it's really importantcontextually here. So from from
(21:56):
my perspective, you know,Germany is known as certainly a
big consumer of whiskey, a verystrong export market for a lot
of brands, one of the firstexport markets you're going to
go to, particularly in Europe.And obviously there's also a
strong domestic beer market, Imean, arguably known for that
(22:18):
more than any other alcoholicbeverage, maybe secondary, you
know, schnapps and some andfruit brandies. But that's,
that's kind of been the market.But domestic distillation of
whiskey as a as a whole, really,was very reason it started in
about 19/81 product in 1983 wasas you were starting, well, not
(22:43):
starting up from scratch, butyou know, starting stork club
and restarting the distilleryinto this new vision, and
learning about what you may haveknown already about, what the
German market and German historyof distillation is there, I
guess, is there any particularreason why distillation of
whiskey In particular did nottake off until later on.
Bastian Heuser (23:03):
I'm not quite sure why, because we've we've
been one of the first countriesin in Northern Europe to distill
grain. We've been distillinggrain since hundreds and
hundreds of years, but it justnever went into casks and was
aged as whiskey. Most of it wasactually drunk neat as the so
(23:28):
called Spirit on which is justan basically an unaged or
slightly aged, great braindistiller, white whiskey or
white dog, you know. So I don'tknow why, but especially with
(23:51):
the kind of context of being abeer nation, being a also a
bread nation, you know, withGermany is quite famous for its
variety in bread, and that wassomething we took, basically our
inspiration from, because it'srye bread is in Germany, somehow
(24:18):
it's A cultural heritage andfood culture, especially in the
northern part, and so that wasfor us, inspiration. Why we
never or why we started so lateproducing whiskey, I can't
really tell you, because we hadall the things that you need,
(24:42):
you know. But I supposedistilling, yeah, distilling,
Germany is kind of split intotwo parts. So the northern part
has always been distillinggrain, and the southern part was
always famous for its fruit anddistilled. Link fruit, so all of
(25:02):
the food brandies, maybe thiskind of, you know, separation
was also some reason why thiswas never really taken into
account. But as you said, yeah,definitely biggest, biggest
(25:24):
whiskey market in Europe by far,with 80 million people, lots of,
lots of people drinking whiskeyover here, yeah, and quite a bit
of American whiskey.
David Levine (25:36):
Yes, quite a bit. And that's really what I mean
when I was just speaking with,think my last interview as of
this, as of this interview,would have been with white peak
distillery, out of England, andthey said, you know, they're,
they're still fairly smallproduction, and they're growing
very, very the word is justescaping me right now, but with
(26:00):
A lot of purpose in terms ofwhere they're going first. And
they said Germany, Italy, werethe first countries that they
exported to, because those weremarkets that could were
interested and could handlethings. There is also something
that I find interesting aboutthe German market, and we don't
have to go on a big tangentabout this, but I love
(26:20):
mentioning it, which is that inthe rum category, and Pete to a
certain extent too, butespecially in the rum category,
brands from like Jamaica orwhoever making funky rums, the
funkiest stuff goes to Germanyas as a as a country, if I can
paint with a broad brush here.Love the I guess it's just that
(26:44):
you love the more intense outthere flavors. Perhaps it's not
about the gentle palette. It'slike, I want to be smacked in
the face with Jamaican funk onthis one. And I've always found
that fascinating, because it'snot really seen in the
surrounding countries. It'slike, No, we go to Germany with
with the hand of the state 1000plus Esther rums?
Bastian Heuser (27:03):
Exactly? Yeah, there is a red line, true,
because also the Nordiccountries, but Germany also is
one of the big markets forpitted whiskeys. So absolutely,
we seem to like it a bit morebold and but then maybe that
(27:31):
helps us with our rye whiskey.As as most, most rye whiskeys
are a bit more, yeah, a bit morepowerful and more bold and spicy
to clients or to customers thatcome in and do some tastings
(27:53):
with us. I always try or explainthem rye whiskey, comparing it
to bread. You know, a rye breadis dark, it's, it's bold, it's,
it's, has much flavor, whilst,yeah, other breads from from
white flowers are a bit less,less flavorful, or just more
(28:19):
easygoing. I like
David Levine (28:22):
what you said as well about the kind of divide of
northern and southern here, andhow that can really impact
things. I I think of theNorthern being more influenced
by, as you said, the Nordiccountries, to a certain extent,
Finland, Russia, up to yourNortheast, and whereas the
South, you're more with thefruit brandies being around
France, Italy, the countriesthat would have those kinds of
(28:46):
produce as well and and yet Istill go back to that. All these
countries have very strongdistilling traditions. Notably,
though, you know, I do want topoint out France, I think, has
maybe the most comparabledissonance there, where they had
a very strong, sorry, a strongdistilling culture of brandies
(29:07):
and Armagnacs and such, for along time, but not domestic
whiskey. Their domestic whiskey,I think, started in 1985 so been
about the same time. And shoutout to Mariana Tardy and Matthew
for our episode on on FrenchWhiskey a few weeks ago as well.
So as I was, I was looking intothis German market, there were a
(29:31):
lot of parallels that I sawthere. And you being a pure rye
distillery adds another level ontop of that. But some of the
similarities, you know, forexample, Germany has, I think it
was about just shy of 30, either20,000 or 30,000 breweries and
(29:51):
distilleries, licenses, yeah,vast majority are brandies.
White spirits. In terms ofwhiskey, you're talking more in
the low hundreds. And if you'retalking exclusively whiskey,
it's in the, you know, maybehigh dozens, under 100 and then
(30:14):
when you get to only rye, youguys, that's, yeah, you know,
yeah, the circle keeps gettingsmaller and smaller. So the I
guess I'm also somewhatsurprised that that market
hasn't taken off more, justbecause, you know, your your
rise is a little bit separate,but because there's such a
strong brewing tradition therewith with the malt, that they
(30:36):
didn't just take that next stepof, okay, we're going to brew it
and then we're going to distillit. But I agree with you as
well, in that the traditions offood. I mean, that's where a lot
of this comes from. And Germanrye bread, especially for you
know, as appropriate to youguys, it's known for being
German rye bread. You can tastewhat a German rye bread is
(30:57):
supposed to be, versus like aDanish rye bread or something
else, and it's delicious. Imean, I use German rye, German
pretzel crusts, things likethat, in my tasting notes,
frequently for somethingespecially if it has, like
roasted character or a darkcrust kind of character. And I
love it. I feel he's veryrepresentative of what it is.
(31:17):
And I thought about that whiletasting your whiskies, because I
did not want to automaticallyput that as a tasting note, if,
if it wasn't there, you know, soI will say it was there to a
point the roasted notes, which Ikind of equated almost to a
roasted rye, or, like a crystalmalt, kind of rye, but it was
(31:40):
still remarkably fruity as well.It had them. It wasn't super
light. It had a great mouthfeel, so it wasn't totally
stripped of the lower alcohols.But both versions, even despite
the flavor differences,inherently, had just Yeah, which
is a lot of flavor packed intoit. So I'd love to as we've
(32:01):
taken the 30,000 view of Germanwhiskey, come back down to store
club and say, All right, so youguys are making rye whiskey.
Now, when you converted overfrom single malt to rye, did you
have to change any of theequipment or processes
Bastian Heuser (32:21):
when we took over, the previous owner was
actually he didn't have meshtons of fermentation tanks. He
bought the the distillers beerfrom breweries surrounding the
(32:41):
area and then fermented in IBCTanks. So very well. How do you
say not at the highestprofessional level, with very
changing results? You know,yeah, depending on the weather.
(33:04):
And so we said, okay, that's,that's, that's not for us. We
want to have the equipmentready. We want to make our own
recipes. We don't want to be,want to be or want to have to
work, work with other breweriestogether. So we installed a mesh
ton fermenters, our own brainmill, so all everything that we
(33:30):
need. And at that point, wealready decided to only go
right, so there is no filterfiltration at any point of the
process. So we basicallydesigned our setup to only
distill rye. So when we get ourgrains, they are built on site
(33:56):
to a fine rye flour, and then wemesh, ferment and distill with
all the solids. So I always sayit's, it's kind of a whole grain
whiskey, you know, there's this,yeah, that's probably why you
get lots of flavor and mouthfeel. Because you we distill
(34:19):
with everything like, I guess alot of rye whiskey disagrees do
as well. I mean, we all have tothe problem with the gluey
proteins of the rye, and it'sgetting very sticky. So, yeah,
the the mentioned fruit notesthat you said that that you can
(34:42):
pick up in our whiskeys, atleast partially from our yeast
that we use, we use a bellscissor fruit beer yeast for our
fermentation and. So our whitedog, or new make, when you smell
(35:04):
and taste it, you pick upbanana, pear, cherry, so it's,
it's very, very fruity, estuarystyle of new make that we
created. I
David Levine (35:25):
always say it's a a it's a shame that new make
isn't more of a more available,I guess, because most new make
is not, is not considered to be,you know, a sellable product, or
it's not really considered ofmuch value until it's aged. But
when you have distilleries like,like you a lot of craft
(35:45):
distilleries that have spoken toboth of the US and elsewhere,
they talk about how good theirnew make is, and those are the
cases where I want to taste it,because I'm like, Okay, you're
making like, you know, you wantto make something that's really
good before it goes into thebarrel. Barrels at best. It's
going to hide a few things, butit's not going to fix bad white
dog. So I like that. I likethat. Those notes are ones that
(36:12):
you're, you know, looking forand getting. I i The cherry one
in particular was interesting. Iwas thinking to myself, I didn't
really get many stone fruitnotes, like a cherry plum
nectarine kind of thing. And forme, those, those do kind of,
they can kind of flow togethersometimes, yeah, I got a lot of
kind of less sharp citrus, so,like, either an orange or a
(36:39):
grapefruit marmalade, mm hmm,with some of the pith in there,
so it's got that little bit ofsweet, bitter, you know, yeah,
and just spreading that onfreshly toasted sourdough bread,
it was delicious. And I reallyenjoyed it because it had that
great mouth feel. It didn't justdissipate it, it lingered. So I
(37:00):
got more flavors evolving overtime. And you know, like I said,
the nose and initial palette didfeel different, so I didn't get
as many of those really strongspice like the black pepper
punches that rye usually has. Igot a little bit more on the
foolproof 110, proof, yes, buton the 90 proof, not as much. It
(37:23):
was very easy to drink it. Youcould tell that there was 90
proof. You could tell that therewere a lot of flavors in there.
Did not feel watered down onebit. And I, I loved that. So how
did you so just for one thing,just for confirmation then, so
you're able to get the grainfrom around you. So really, as
(37:45):
soon as the grain is dried tothe point that you need it to be
dried to to its moisturecontent, from that point on,
it's all you guys like. Youdon't have to send out to be
malted anywhere. You don't sendit to be milled anywhere. It's
all you until it goes in thebottle.
Unknown (37:59):
Absolutely. Yeah, which is a beautiful thing, yeah,
yeah, yeah. Do We? We?
Bastian Heuser (38:09):
We tried out rye malt, as I said, and we had our
own recipe spec for that, butwe've always been intrigued by
using unmalted Rye, actually,because we wanted to have that
kind of bold, bold flavor. We'vealways loved Robert rye whiskey
(38:41):
from Chicago, and we've beenexchanging a lot with him over
time. And yeah, we like thisstyle. And so we said, Okay, we
want to have that, that really,that grain from around the area,
(39:02):
not, not really do anything toit, but that pure grain flavor,
and we managed to to make, atleast from from my perspective,
a very smooth rye whiskey. It'snot, doesn't have that, really,
as you said, that that veryloads and loads of pepper and
(39:22):
spice. It's a bit more smoother,more on the fruity side.
Sometimes, for me, it sits inbetween a berm and a classical,
classical berm and a classicalAmerican rye, somewhere in
between there, because it hasfew more sweet notes.
David Levine (39:41):
Yeah, I can see that for sure. I mean, I was
thinking too of you taste rye.There's the categories you go
through. There's the citrus, theblack pepper, the is it herbal
or not? Is it and the 90 proofwas not super herbal. It was.
Was as I mean, as we said, itwas just very easy drinker, very
(40:03):
smooth in the way that we wantpeople to use the word smooth,
not just as a Yeah, yeah. Andthen in tasting the 110 proof,
that's when I got just a littlebit of, like tarragon and light
black licorice in there. Yeah,it wasn't so much that it was
distracting. I mean, I loveblack licorice anyway, so I
wouldn't have so I wouldn't havecared. But if I want something
(40:25):
that punchy with black licorice,I'll pull out my Absinthe or
something. Yeah, no, all thepieces felt very balanced, and
it didn't feel like it wastrying to be any particular
category of rye here in the US.And forgive me for pontificating
for 30 seconds, but like itfeels sometimes, like whenever a
(40:47):
new ride comes out, unlessyou've got a really small
distillery that has a vision inmind of something very
different, it always ends upbeing. Is it a barely legal rye?
Is it a Kentucky style, aMaryland style, Pennsylvania
style, 95 five MGP or 100% andthere's really very few
exceptionally, one of them justspoke with hodling and Co in San
Francisco. They've been doing100% malted Roth since the
(41:09):
beginning. So that obviouslyvery different. And so when you
get out of those kind of broadcategories and you taste
something new, like I felt likeit was doing with with this,
again, I keep saying thatbecause it was such a great
experience. They've tastedalmost 3500 whiskies at this
point. Like when I get to trysomething that genuinely feels,
(41:32):
oh, this is new to me. I'mexcited. I get excited. Yeah, I
wanted to ask too in the, youknow, the next stage of
operations. Shall we call it?You said to use a Bell says on
fruit beer yeast? Yes. So howdid you land on that?
Bastian Heuser (41:52):
Through lots and lots of trials with I don't know
how many different yeast strainswe tried out in the beginning,
we had a a colleague. He He is abrewer, and Richie was actually
(42:17):
brewing for some craft beerbreweries here in Germany. And
he was helping us out for forsix months, and was really
training us about the wholemashing, fermentation thing, you
know, everything, also cleaning,how to clean properly. That's
(42:43):
what a brewer can and with him,we actually worked on these
recipes and tried numerousdifferent yeast strains,
actually mostly from brewingbackground. And yeah. With that,
this is all yeast. We just said,Okay, that's it. That's exactly
(43:08):
what we like. It was such a nicenew make that we just say, okay,
that's that's exactly what wewant. It. It takes a lot longer
we ferment for a week or so, andit's not highly efficient at
all, but it just gives thatbeautiful flavor that we just
(43:32):
said, That's ours. This also
David Levine (43:36):
came from the conversation with white peak,
because they get their yeast,their live yeast, from
Thornbridge brewery in theircounty. And they, you know, they
crop it every week, and Tuesdayis fresh East day. And they were
saying they, I think it was fromthis conversation, if not
apologies Max, but that, youknow, they because they're using
(43:58):
brewers yeast rather than just adistillers yeast or a combo of
them, they're not trying todrive these to death in the
first 48 to 60 hours, like younormally would with the
distillers yeast, where it'sjust running hot and fast, and
by the end of two days, it'sdone, you want to let it go
longer, maybe get into somemalolactic fermentation at the
(44:21):
end for some more fruity estersas well. So you said you have a
week long fermentation. That'svery long for whiskey industry
as a whole. I do love it. I lovethose long fermentations because
the flavors you get so youmentioned are also the you had
to bring in fermenters. Soyou're doing open top and and
(44:41):
insulated, or what does thatlook like?
Unknown (44:44):
No our
Bastian Heuser (44:47):
we wanted to play very safe because of our
lacking knowledge. So we said,Okay, we we had some bad
experiences with some. Sometrials in the beginning with
open fermentation. And thenStephen said, Dude, I'm not
(45:08):
risking this. This is I justdon't know enough at this point.
Let's play safe. So we gotclosed fermentation, stainless
steel fermenters. They all havea mixer to to blend the ferment
(45:29):
because of all the brain that'sstill in there, and they are
double walled so we can we cancool or warm them, warm the
fermenting mesh, if we want,always keeping it in a safe
space at what 25 to maximum 30degrees during that time. And
(45:56):
yeah, just letting the yeast dotheir work and give them time to
do so
David Levine (46:03):
look, respect to Stefan for saying, Look, I
don't, this is the limit of myknowledge. I'm gonna, let's play
this safe here that more peopleshould, should say things like
that. So, the, what was the nextplace I wanted to go with that?
The Okay, so you're fermentingfor about a week. You get thing,
(46:25):
you're, then you're going intothe stills. And you said you're,
you're not loudering it out,you're distilling, nope,
everything goes into the still.So, so what is your still setup
look like
Bastian Heuser (46:38):
then? So once we are ready, after that week, we
pump the mesh. We have twostilts. One has 1000 liter
capacity in the other one, 650and they're both fairly
classical hybrid pots. So firstdistillation takes place in a
(47:01):
classical pot still. Seconddistillation takes place in a
small column still with fiveplates. That's yeah, small
setup. Really, really, yeah,really, really, really, similar
to a lot of distilleriesnowadays, in the US, in the
(47:22):
craft distilling community, Ithink they use a lot of those,
and they are from, yeah, thosestills are from two German,
small German producers ofstealing distilling equipment,
Of course, from the southernpart of Germany, so used, they
(47:45):
are used, or they have been useda lot in audiovi Making as well.
And yeah, first distillation inthe pot still we get from our
mesh, our fermented mesh, hasabout nine and a half to, yeah,
(48:05):
nine and a half not not we'renot really reaching 10% alcohol
by volume. So 20 proof and we gowith that into our still, first
destination in the pot stillgets us to about 60 proof and
30% alcohol by volume. And thensecond distillation, we run
(48:30):
completely through those fiveplates, and we get to roughly
about 75% ABV, 150 proof, yeah,in on average.
David Levine (48:44):
Then from there, where do you prove down to go
into the barrels.
Bastian Heuser (48:52):
Yeah, we get to 150 proof. And then we take
local water. We just strip it ofeverything and clean it and then
add add that to our new make,and we go into barrels at 120
(49:12):
proof, 60% alcohol by volume, soa bit lower than in Scotland,
for example, 63.5 usually is thecase. I'm not quite sure. I've
heard lots about Americandistillers, especially in the
south, going even lower, at 110proof and an even lower into
(49:36):
barrels, and we just wanted toavoid too much tenants. In Rye
is spicy in itself, and so we'realways quite careful about
tenants. So we didn't want to gotoo high into our barrels.
Understood
David Levine (49:57):
and the barrels themselves are an interesting
part of your equation. Equation.So I want to devote time to that
as well. I want to pause justfor a second, because this is
important to where theproduction goes from here, which
is that, as you know, as part ofthe EU you're subject to certain
regulations on whiskey. That's,you know, it's got to be three
(50:17):
years old to be called Whiskey,and a number of other things as
well. But in Germanyspecifically, are there any, I
guess, German specificregulations on what makes a
whiskey or a rye or anythinglike that?
Bastian Heuser (50:35):
No, this. This is actually regulated through
the EU and the EU regulationsare almost almost similar to
Scotch whiskey, but there aresmall little things that we are
(50:59):
allowed to use and still call itwhiskey, while Scotland
couldn't, or Ireland, forexample, other woods besides.
OK, so we could age in Chestnut,we could age in Cherry and still
call it whiskey after threeyears. But that's apart from
that, it's pretty much the same,yeah. So it has to be grain. It
(51:25):
has to be distilled, not higherthan, I think, what 85 or 86
ABV, something like that. Andthen needs to age in barrels of
a certain size, maximum 700liter barrels for these three
years in a day, and then putwhiskey on
David Levine (51:48):
it. So the reason I paused there was because,
again, your your barrels arehave an interesting story in
themselves. So use both Americanand German oak. So I didn't see
any experimentation with, as yousaid, like the chestnut or chair
yet. So, you know, we'll see,see, if you want to, but
Bastian Heuser (52:06):
yeah, the first 1010, years were dedicated to,
you know, making, making goodwhiskey, and then experimental
things will come in the next 10years. Now, fair enough. And
David Levine (52:17):
with the the two stills of 1000 liter and then
650 so I would think a runprobably gets you about two,
maybe two and a half barrelsMax.
Bastian Heuser (52:25):
Um, yeah, one, well, two runs on our 1000 liter
still gets us one barrel ofwhiskey. So you could say if we
run both stills, one run, onebarrel on both fields, yes,
David Levine (52:42):
gosh. So again, not, you know, massive levels of
production, but enough that youcan put out your product. You
can export a little bit atleast, and get your name out
there. Which, which I love. Sothe barrels using American oak,
German oak, and I've seen thethe I the epithet of its
(53:05):
Napoleonic oak. So explain whatthat means.
Unknown (53:09):
Yeah, yeah.
Bastian Heuser (53:12):
We said, Okay, we always need it. Need American
oak because it's just has moresugars and you get more more of
that vanilla, toffee, caramelflavor from the American oak,
European org in itself is, ofcourse, a different species than
(53:33):
American, or has much moretenants, And, yeah, grows a lot
longer as a bit more on thespices file, unless you age a
lot longer than it willbasically disappear again. But
therefore, we said, Okay, we, ofcourse, we want to have some,
(53:57):
some local or national, youknow, we've got huge, huge
forests in Germany and and thereis one part in the south, south
western part of Germany, righton the French border, lots and
lots of oak Tree forests, oakforests. And then we say, okay,
(54:22):
we we want to, we want to havesome, some German or in our
whiskey, just to differentiateit from American riot, it needs
to have its own story. So wethen talk to our Cooper, and he
said, Well, he has reallyamazing trees over there, and
(54:47):
they are called Napoleon trees,because these trees are at least
250 years old before they arebeing cut down and made into
barrels. And that means thatthese, this forest, and these,
these trees were actuallyalready a tree when Napoleon was
(55:10):
born, and through those forestswent a lot of history. So not
only two World Wars, but also,you know, Napoleonic walls. So
our Cooper actually, when hecuts down those those trees, he
basically has to X ray for anyammunition still sticking in the
(55:35):
in those trees. Fun fact, sothat you can't you, of course,
you're not allowed to use thoseif there are any any lead in
there. And we just love this,the kind of story, these old
trees that have seen so muchhistory and are now used for
(55:59):
whiskey making, and they imparta very distinct flavor, I would
say, I I'd always define it morein terms of, like dried fruits,
lots and lots of of not nuttyflavor. And then you have the
(56:21):
tenants that really go through,especially in the first three
years. You actually need to agewhiskey longer than that in
those barrels to to get throughthe tenant phase and get more of
a of a fruity sweetness, butthere's no vanilla, there's no
caramel, there's no Yeah, it's atotally different set of aromas
(56:46):
than those.
David Levine (56:48):
That's fascinating, because I
definitely let them know. So Igot the American oak profile,
yeah, clear, because that'syou're using new American oak.
Bastian Heuser (56:56):
Yes, we use no ex bourbon barrels, but mainly
virgin American oak. Yeah,
David Levine (57:02):
right. So you're getting, you know, the full, the
full brunt of, as you said, thevanilla is the buttery coconut,
some of the baking spices inthere. And I was thinking, I
don't, I don't remember havingtried previously anything
specifically using German oak,certainly not Napoleonic oak, I
feel like that would have reallystood out in my mind if I had so
(57:25):
let's say I haven't triedNapoleonic oak before, and that
was one of my one of thequestions I was most excited to
ask you was, what is the Germanoak to for the profile and the
dried Fruit? Works great inthere. The Yeah, it it's
fascinating to me that thereisn't very much vanilla in
(57:45):
there. I associate vanilla withmost oak species to some level,
or at least baking species, I'msure. But you're also this goes
into a whole conversation aboutwood quality that I know my
friend John would definitelyappreciate, and some others as
well, where you're talking aboutold growth wood. So not only are
(58:09):
these trees old, but becausethey're older, they've got older
environments that they wereaging in, older climates. They
were aging in different airquality, water quality, soil
quality. They're probablytighter grained than newer oak
is. So that's going to add, inaddition to the flavors present,
(58:29):
it's going to do all this. It'sgoing to be less porous. It's
going to have a little bit lessoxidation there. So that's going
to add things. And then, to me,that adds so much character to a
whiskey that you could haveanother German rye distillery
pop up that also uses quote,unquote, German oak, but if
they're not using the non Coke,it's going to be very different.
(58:53):
Yeah, I think that's
Bastian Heuser (58:56):
absolutely, absolutely, although I always
have to say and I actually liketo say this, that the forests
where our Cooper cuts, thosetrees, right next to the French
border, actually, this area hasbeen, over the past 100 years,
(59:19):
has been French German, FrenchGerman, French German, French
German, French German. Yeah,through all those wars, it's,
it's always been, you know,belonging to either one of
those, those two nations. And Ialways like to pronounce that,
(59:40):
that it's just, you know, it'sthat, that reason, and that
region. And it's not about,about German, it's, I think it's
just the area, and it's thequality of the wood there. And,
of course, you have other. Areregions in Europe where you get
(01:00:02):
awesome wood, but, yeah, thatthat's just a very special thing
about those trees is actuallythat long, lasting history and,
and I can't claim it as being aGerman tree. I it's, you know,
it's multinational.
David Levine (01:00:25):
I think, I think calling into polionic is, is
probably the most appropriate. Imean, he's Yes, yes, gonna
represent both countries at somepoint. He's gonna own both
countries at some point, yeah,for better or worse,
Unknown (01:00:38):
true, you know.
David Levine (01:00:39):
So I know, I think it's a good way to put it,
understanding that there aren'ta ton of these casks available,
because I don't know how manyother distillers are using them,
and then you're not doing a tonof production. Are these
particular barrels in demand inthe second market, like once you
guys are done with
Bastian Heuser (01:01:00):
them? I don't think they are super sought
after. I couldn't, I couldn'tsay that they are specifically
sought after. I guess a lot ofpeople in especially in the
(01:01:21):
aftermarket, a lot of breweriesor distilleries are still always
looking for money American orfor more sweetness, and that
type of would You You have to becareful with those Napoleon
(01:01:42):
barrels, because they are very,very powerful. So in our, for
example, in our straight dry inthe beginning we, I think we had
like 25% or in our first tries,we had like 25% of those
Napoleon oak barrels in there.But it was too, too much. So we
(01:02:08):
had to kind of tone it back alittle bit, because they're just
very intense in flavor, which iswhich is good, but you just have
to be careful how you use itotherwise, of course, if, if
we'd be older, and you, I thinkif you age a lot longer, then
(01:02:28):
this will wear down and willmake beautiful whiskies. We've,
we've had a couple of singlebarrel releases of those
barrels, and they really turnout awesome. So,
David Levine (01:02:43):
I yeah, I mean, I immediately, I thought of again,
because of of the stockavailable, the number available,
maybe a distillery is not thegreat place because it's might
not be able to use a lot, but Icould see a brewery taking on
these casks to age, perhaps astout or a porter or something
like that. Not, as you said, notsuper long, if it's that
(01:03:04):
powerful. But, you know, put itin for, I'm not a, I'm not a
huge dark beer guy, so I don'tknow the terminology or the
usual sphere, but let's sayusing six months for usual,
maybe it's a month or twoinstead. Yeah, because that's
all I need.
Bastian Heuser (01:03:19):
Yeah, we do work with together with breweries.
We've got a couple of breweriesin Berlin that make really
awesome beer, and we've hadprojects with them where they
actually they won the story.Even made a rye wine, so a
(01:03:42):
fairly high proof rye beer withour rye mold, aged it in our rye
whiskey barrels, then we gotthose back, aged our whiskey in
and stuff like that. Of course,we we did that, and that's lots
of fun. I really I'm a hugeperson. I'm a huge fan of a boy,
(01:04:07):
of a good Boiler Maker. Goodbeer next to good whiskey is
just nice. Love it.
David Levine (01:04:14):
So I'm going to put a pin in that part, because
I want to talk aboutcollaboration for sure. Just to
close out our processconversation with the maturation
So, as you said at thebeginning, you're able to mature
on site or nearby, in thispristine environment. So what
does your maturation setup looklike? You're doing dunnage
(01:04:35):
ripped what it
Unknown (01:04:37):
looks like we have
Bastian Heuser (01:04:40):
basically two warehouses. They are brick,
brick walls and a just a regularroof on top of it, but lots of
air can access under the roof,so it's open. So. Them, and then
(01:05:01):
they are rigged, not palletized.And we have about 1200 barrels
of aging stock, so it's verysmall production, but two of
those warehouses are on theground floor and in the
(01:05:23):
summertime we get to roughlywhat 25 to up to 30 degrees
Celsius in those warehouses. Andwe have one. It's called our
microwave. We have one warehousedirectly under the roof on the
first floor of our production,where it gets to it gets another
(01:05:46):
five degrees hotter, and this iswhere, where, basically our
honey barrels are really Aging.It does age more quickly than on
the ground floor and brick in abrick building, and lots of wood
(01:06:10):
surrounding those, those barrelsand yeah, and in general,
Temperature wise, in Germany, orin our area, in Germany, we get
quite cold winters, belowfreezing point, and then
somewhere around zero degrees inthe warehouses and the
summertime, yeah, about 30degrees Celsius. I never really
(01:06:33):
know how much that is in fahret,but you maybe, you know I'm
David Levine (01:06:41):
trying to the math my head in 30s, about 90 days or
so, something
Bastian Heuser (01:06:45):
like that. Yeah, I think so. I think so 990 95
somewhere around there. So it'snot as hot in Kentucky, exactly.
It's not super hot, but it'sdouble as hot as in Scotland or
Ireland. So, yeah, I was gonna
David Levine (01:07:02):
say it's been, it's been that hot or hotter
here in New York for severaldays.
Bastian Heuser (01:07:06):
Yeah. Can imagine
David Levine (01:07:11):
that's, I mean, you have the advantage to it
being more inland, so you'renot, yeah, so, you know, the
more inland and more and moretemperate, so you don't have
these huge swings, but enough toto mature. You know, you said it
has to be three years old, but Ithink most your products are at
least four.
Bastian Heuser (01:07:32):
Yeah, yeah. We are getting to four and a half
to five years in as a as astandard for our whiskeys now,
yeah, and of course, we'retrying to get older and older
with stuff, but we feel quitecomfortable with around five
years. I think a lot of ryewhiskeys have a have a sweet
(01:07:55):
spot at five years. For me,personally, I
David Levine (01:07:59):
love that you use the phrase sweet spot, because I
was just throwing this in hereas a as a side note that I saw.
Are there still any bottlesavailable of that Christina Tosi
inspired serial killer?
Bastian Heuser (01:08:12):
No, they've been, they've been sold out
fairly quickly. But that thatthat was one Limited Edition.
People just talked about somuch. It was so much fun. So,
yeah, coming, coming from a bar,we always, we always thought
whiskey is kind of a, you know,I wouldn't say elite, but, you
(01:08:35):
know, it's, it's sometimes a bitold fashioned. And especially,
especially from a Europeanperspective, you know, you
always look at that traditionalscotch and Irish, you know,
don't, don't even add water orice, otherwise you get stabbed
in the back. So we always liketo excuse the French around with
(01:08:58):
the whiskey. And for thatspecific cereal killer whiskey,
we infused breakfast cereals,six different breakfast cereals,
into our rye whiskey, inspiredby Miss Tosi and her milk bar
and her cereal cereal milk thatshe makes ice cream from and
(01:09:22):
other desserts, I guess. So weused Fruit Loops and honey pops
and cinnamon is and, yeah,infuse them in our rye whiskey,
filter it and put it in abottle. And it's an amazing
whiskey. I love it. I
David Levine (01:09:42):
was gonna say I couldn't find many reviews, just
because it was a very limitedrelease, of course. But I feel
like that's one of those thingsthat would either be just mind
blowing the delicious or like agimmick one time, I think. But
it sounds like it came up prettywell, so I'll
Bastian Heuser (01:09:59):
yeah. Yeah, we didn't, we didn't sweeten it any
further. So all the sweetened, Imean, there's lots of sugar in
all of those cereals, and it, itwas kind of, it's kind of like
an old fashioned in a bottle.And that made it, made it
nicely, and it still had 45% abvand yeah, so, but you can try
(01:10:25):
that at home if you want to.This is true.
David Levine (01:10:29):
So unless the segment I've got you for, there
are two areas that I really wantto talk about. And one is, as I
said earlier, is thecollaboration point of view. So
that's collaboration for you,but also within the German
whiskey market, but also whatthe reception has been. So I
(01:10:51):
think let's start thecollaboration is because I saw
in one of the products you hadcollaborated with st Killian,
another distillery. There aremalt distillery mainly, and as
you mentioned, you'vecollaborated with breweries in
as far as you know, exchangingbarrels and things like that. So
(01:11:11):
I often, or we often hear, withthe American craft market and
American craft scene thatthey're very collaborative. They
love sharing ideas and doing, ifnot cross distillery blends, at
least sharing thoughts andprocesses and that. It's very
collaborative. People are kind.They're willing to help out, and
everything goes along with that.How has how is the German
(01:11:35):
distilling scene, particularlywhiskey distilling scene, like
is it seen as prettycollaborative, and people are
helping out rising tide liftsall boats type of thing, or is,
or is it a little more
Bastian Heuser (01:11:47):
isolated, I would say so and so. You always
have people who arecollaborative, who see that you
need to work on a category. AndI think that's, that's something
we definitely have to work on. Ithink the the English whiskey
(01:12:10):
industry did that quite well toget a profile internationally
over the last years. So inGermany, you have that one, one
part that really sees the bigpicture and does collaborations.
And St Kitts is one of one ofthem, and who make was seriously
(01:12:35):
in the whiskey kind of mindset,and make seriously making
whiskey and but you also haveother examples. I guess that's
it'll be pretty much the same ina lot of other countries. But of
course, you have verytraditional distilleries that
(01:12:57):
are in existence since, I don'tknow how many years, and
they're, of course, moreconservative, conservative than
people like us that you know didsomething from scratch And yeah,
(01:13:18):
and through our history, we arequite connected internationally.
So sometimes we work togetherwith German distilleries or
brewers. But we also had andhave projects with international
with distilleries from othercountries. So it's, a, it's a
(01:13:40):
wild mix. But I'm still seeingin Germany. I'm still seeing a
lack of, kind of, do we have acertain identity? Do we want to
have a certain identity asGerman? Risky, because there are
some so many things that we canbe inspired from, be it bread,
(01:14:02):
be it beer, be it fruit, all ofthese, be it wine, we've got
great wine. So there's lots,lots of stuff to choose from,
and maybe that sometimes makesit hard to have a a certain
profile in the German whiskeybusiness. You know, we've got
(01:14:24):
single malt whiskey makers thatare inspired by brewing. You've
got us more inspired from, Idon't know, bar and bread and
other things and so, yeah, Ithink that that's still, maybe
that still has to come. We'restill not, not connected, and
(01:14:45):
not too much working on, on onegoal in Germany. That's, that's
how I would kind of define wherewe are currently
David Levine (01:14:58):
in Germany. Yeah. I understood. And is there, I
admittedly should have lookedthis up before I started the
interview. But is there, like aGerman whiskey guild, or
something like that created?
Bastian Heuser (01:15:10):
Yes, yeah, there is a German whiskey guild. We
are part of it, just rathershortly or since, since just a
few few months now. But ofcourse, that's that's a way to
(01:15:31):
network and to see where thingsgo and head. Yeah, we'll see
where, where that will will goto and, yeah,
David Levine (01:15:46):
love it. So aside from my from the last question
that I'll save till the end thelast series that I wanted to ask
you about, which is, yeah, whatis the reception been like? And
I'm talking local, domestic,international, as you've rolled
it out over almost the last, Iguess, not quite 10 years,
because you've had to sleep fornine plus you need a maturation.
(01:16:08):
So let's say the last halfdecade, as you've started
rolling out, what is thereception been like?
Bastian Heuser (01:16:13):
In general? We are very happy how things were
received, how our whiskeys werereceived. It's not it's been a
hell of a ride taking over adistillery, and yeah, coming
from scratch and making whiskey.But so far, we especially
(01:16:35):
starting here locally, in asmall, little village with 619,
inhabitants, where thedistillery is it? It was a tough
start, but nowadays, we reallyget along with everyone, and
we've been well received. Wehave lots and lots of tours,
(01:16:59):
distillery tours and tastingsnowadays, here getting lots and
lots of visitors, actually, inour small little village, about
30 to 40,000 visitors in betweenMay and September. Not everyone
will go to our distillery, butmost of them, because there's
(01:17:19):
just one street and a distilleryand a brewery and some
restaurants, you know. So sothat that's been working well,
and then at some point westarted
Unknown (01:17:31):
to go
Bastian Heuser (01:17:34):
into bars and specialists, retail and in bars,
it really works very well. We'rereally happy, because we always
aim to be the Europeanalternative to American whiskey
with our style and our mixability. And we just wanted to
(01:17:58):
offer something local that youcan make classical whiskey
drinks with, with that kind ofYeah, local touch. And that was,
was very, very good and wellreceived. So now in in most of
in most of all the good cocktailbars in Germany, you'll see a
(01:18:23):
bottle of our whiskey, and theyknow about us. Specialist retail
a bit different because of afairly conservative German
whiskey crowd, mostly drinkingscotch single malt. And if
they're if they have a good day,they might try Irish whiskey,
(01:18:44):
but they're really but it's veryconservative when it comes to
rye whiskey, or whiskey fromother countries, even their own,
here in Germany. So that's beenso and so. But we, we have our
our client here, and we're stillgrowing and in export, we I
(01:19:09):
think we had a good start, butthen, of course, he had things
like covid, then the Ukrainianwar, and high inflation. So that
definitely wasn't helpful tobuild export business the way we
(01:19:32):
wanted to. But I guess you justhave to. I mean, in whiskey, in
whiskey, you have to have time.So you have to have have the
time to do this also, and it'sjust not stealth explainable
whiskey from Germany. You haveto have someone in another
(01:19:55):
country to actually explain whatwe do. And it's. It's just not
very traditional. So that'sthat's, of course, not super
easy, but it's also a chance,you know, you have to find the
right people to talk good, goodabout your your whiskey, and if
you find them, it'll work out.So no one would have thought 10
(01:20:20):
years ago that they make gin inGermany, and then monkey 47
sells to PANORA car. So
Unknown (01:20:32):
we'll see. We'll see. Yeah, you
David Levine (01:20:37):
love me some monkey 47 I have to. I like the
simple gins, and then I like the47 ingredients. Ingredient ones
as well. So best. And thank youso much for for talking about
store club. I want to end whereI always end, which is, you
know, you're almost a decade in,you've had previous experience
(01:20:57):
in the beverage alcoholindustry. You are seem pretty
tuned into what is going on inGerman distilling as well. So in
the future, what do you wantyour legacy in that of stork
club to be?
Unknown (01:21:18):
I think I just
Bastian Heuser (01:21:20):
want people to say Star Club fucking good
whiskey. That'll be if peoplealso say that in 50 years, then
everything is fine.
David Levine (01:21:35):
Love it. All right. Well, with that vessel.
Thank you so much. Hang on withme for just a minute after I
finished the recording, thisbeen another episode of The
whiskering podcast. As always,take a look at the show notes,
where you'll see not onlyinformation about store, club,
anything I might have missed inthe notes. So we didn't get to
taste notes for the whiskies Iwas able to try, as well as
where you can buy them,certainly in the US and then
(01:21:59):
through the online store aswell. Really worth trying. And I
meant to say this as well. Theseare exceptionally priced
whiskeys. We're talking 40 ishfor the straight ride, maybe 60
ish or so for the foolproof I'mkind of remembering the numbers
(01:22:19):
off the time have but notexpensive for you know, what I
think is a high quality andpalette intriguing German rye
whiskey. So take a look at theshow notes in the episode
description. Wherever youlisten. Thank you all for
listening, liking andsubscribing and rating us. It
really helps the podcast, andI'll see you all next week. You.
Hey folks, welcome to a new episode of The
whiskering Podcast. Today we aregoing back over to Germany. We
have only visited Germany onceon this podcast, and it was
quite a while ago. So I'mthrilled to have on Bastion
Heuser from stork club,distillery. You also know them
as stork house in the US. We'llget to that a little bit later.
As to why there are two namesfor that. But for now, Bastian,
welcome on.
Bastian Heuser (00:22):
Thank you, David, for your invitation.
Happy to be here,
David Levine (00:25):
absolutely and before I forget. Thank you also
to Georgie Bell, who's onepisode 191 with the heart cut,
for making this introduction.Very appreciative of it, and for
other introductions she's madethat will bear fruit down the
line. So let's start where wealways start. Just to give some
context, sorry, did you hearthat? Yeah, okay, one second. No
Bastian Heuser (00:48):
worries.
David Levine (00:55):
My daughter just turned one and she's going out.
Unknown (00:59):
So awesome, awesome. Yeah. So anyway, we'll jump in.
Bastian Heuser (01:07):
Oh, that's, that's just, that's just life,
you know exactly the other way.So
David Levine (01:11):
let's start where we always start, and just give a
little context for where we'regoing to be talking about today.
I'll throw it over to you forthe origin story of stork club.
Yeah.
Bastian Heuser (01:25):
My name is Bastian. I'm one of the three
founders of store club, ryewhiskey distillery, yeah, just
about an hour south of Berlin,our beautiful capital, and we
became distillers, whiskeydistillers, whiskey producers,
(01:46):
actually by chance. Well, aboutnine and a half 1010, almost 10
years ago, we actually wanted tobuy a cask of whiskey to to make
some presents for our clients,we had an marketing and
distribution agency for thedrinks industry so focused on on
(02:11):
drinks at that point already.And yeah, I wanted to send them
a small little bottle of whiskeythat we wanted to finish certain
ways and thank them for for thebusiness. And through that, we
came in touch with a distilleryowner, as I said, about one hour
(02:33):
south of Berlin, in a biospherereserve, and he told us that he
is looking for someone to takeover the distillery because he
had a bad accident and was 67 atthat point, and wanted to, yeah,
basically, take, take hispension and leave the business.
(02:59):
And so when we talked to him, wekind of, yeah, we fell in love
with the place, and said, Well,we would know someone who could
take over this theory. And yeah,that basically made us actually,
(03:22):
it went fairly quickly sixmonths later, I guess, yeah, six
months later, we were the ownerof a small distillery producing
whiskey, mostly single malt,only minor amounts of rice since
about 2004 and yeah, nobackground in distilling, no
(03:48):
background in brewing, what haveyou. But we, yeah, we, we've
always been drinking quite alot. So I guess that that was a
good training taking overdistillery. And from then on,
yeah, we totally Yeah. We putall, put all, put it, put
(04:14):
everything on that one card, andinvested heavily and and soon
after, turned the distilleryinto a rye whiskey only
distillery, yeah, for forseveral reasons, which we'll
probably come to later on, butthat basically just kind of is a
(04:37):
quick run through the beginningsof stock lock rye whiskey.
David Levine (04:44):
And just for, I guess we'll address it quickly,
there's stork club rye whiskey,and in the US it is stork house.
So just for people who might seestork house on the shelves in
the US, can you explain thereasons why?
Bastian Heuser (04:58):
Yeah, of course, of course. So. So the distillery
had a different name when wetook over and but our biosphere
is very famous for the all offor the stocks that come every
year from the South to nest hereand breed in our area. So lots
(05:19):
of storks. And we always foundthat, you know, stock, the stock
is a lovely kind of bird, onlybreeds in very, how do you say,
in very good nature, and isbasically a sign of, of all, all
(05:41):
things positive. So we said,okay, let's, let's dig in to
our, what could we name? Andthen it's, you know, it's three
founders, club of stocks, youknow, three, three people is a
club, almost. And hence, thenstore club. And we registered
(06:02):
the trademark, and that was nota problem in Europe, but when we
approached trademark in the US,which we already knew would be,
probably tricky, we were notable to because there was a
famous nightclub in New York inthe 1920s a guy named
(06:27):
Billingsley run this club, andit must have been the most
famous nightclub duringProhibition In New York. And the
predecessors of this guy, theystill own the trademark stock
club in the US don't really doanything with it. But then we
(06:50):
said, Okay, we have to kind oftake something else. The stock
should be in there. So it's astock house. That's why we have
those two trademarks
David Levine (07:03):
Gotcha. So the as you said, I mean, this vision
came together very quickly, iflike, you went to the distillery
for one purpose. Six monthslater you had it, and then went
from there. I do want to know,like this distillery that you
found had won numerous awardsfor seeing them all beforehand.
It was very fun. I don't knowhow well known it was in terms
(07:26):
of notoriety, but it was wellknown for its quality. Let's put
it that way, right? So you know,you meet the owner. He's ready
to retire for the reasons yououtlined earlier. What kind of
deter what made thedetermination for you to say,
All right, this is really wellknown for single malt. We could
just take over this distillery,but we want to change it to rye.
Bastian Heuser (07:49):
Yeah, it was basically when we took over. And
as I said, we were completelyself taught, so one of us
actually had to teach himselfdistilling, which wasn't me, but
my partner, Stefan, who at thatpoint said, Okay, I need to know
how things run here. And he wentright into it, with the help of
(08:16):
our network and some friends,befriended brewers and
distillers and basically learnedeverything. First of all, just
kind of making, what was be,what was made here anyways, so
single malt whiskey primarily,but we've always been not your
(08:40):
typical, traditional single maltwhiskey drinker. We've always
had much more fun with Americanwhiskeys, with whiskies from
other countries using othergrains and in drinking, not in
making. So we said, Okay, is itus when we kind of go further
(09:09):
and keep on producing singlemode? Is that really us, or is
it not really us? And we quicklysaid, Okay, actually, actually,
we come from a bar background.We've been bartenders for a long
time. We've always had a lovefor Ryan burn whiskeys and and
it's been a at that point, like10 years ago, it was still a
(09:34):
niche. It sort of still is, butit was a niche. Then we said,
Okay, well, if we do ryewhiskey, actually, it also takes
us out of the sheer compareability with, you know, you're
always being compared with 15year old Scotch whiskey or 20
(09:58):
year old Irish which is. Wasjust hard. So then we said,
Okay, if we, if we take someother grain, we're kind of out
of that and and then in the end,so we had this bar background.
We always loved Ryan Bermanwhiskey. We saw the niche, the
(10:21):
growing niche, of rye whiskey,and then we talked to farmers
here, and they basically toldus, I mean, guys, you're,
you're, you're starting overhere. And actually, the grain
that we grow here is rye. It'sour predominant grain, and
that's not because we have avery good soil, but we have very
(10:44):
bad soil, actually, very, verysandy soils. Here. It's very dry
area and and it's a winter harshgrain. So it's, you can
basically so out before thewinter comes. And therefore,
(11:05):
because we had harsh winters inthe past, therefore the farmers
always grew right here. And wesaid, Okay, well now, I mean, we
have that local grain, and thenour history and our our favorite
whiskey style will go for eyewhiskey. We want to be, be we
(11:27):
want to concentrate on one thingand do that really good, instead
of having, you know, severalstyles, especially with our
lacking of distillingbackground. And you know, we had
to master that one thing first,and that was very important. So
yeah, about one year into takingover the distillery, we turned
(11:52):
everything off and wentcompletely into rye, as the
grain whiskies.
David Levine (11:59):
So the soil is saying it's basically good for
storks and for rye, but that'sabout it. So I do want to just
point something out for you knowto your credit, which is you
don't have you and your cofounder, Stefan and Sebastian,
don't have productionbackgrounds behind before
(12:20):
starting this, but you did allhave experience in and around
the beverage alcohol space. Soin addition to being, you know,
the casual drinkers and such,you also did have that
experience. This wasn't totallynew to you. It was more the just
the technical stuff that you hadto learn, which I think put you
at least a couple steps ahead ofsome people who just want to
start a distillery from scratch,
Bastian Heuser (12:42):
absolutely, absolutely that, and that has
been very, very helpful in termsof putting our, our whiskey on
some tables and into some bars,and Just in general, our our
network through our previousventures, was, was, of course,
(13:06):
helpful to to place the brand,but, but nonetheless, you know,
a brand can always only be asgood as it's, as the content in
the bottle, I would say, so. So,yeah, that's that's why we
really needed to to make somesome good, some good juice.
David Levine (13:29):
And for this podcast, Bastian and the stork
club slash stork House team weregracious enough to share two
bottles with me. I got to trythe store house straight, rye
risky and the stork house,foolproof. Rye, risky. Both. I
really enjoy both. And I wassurprised actually, at how much
(13:50):
about 20 proof points ofdifference could make in flavor.
Usually, I usually, if it'ssomething that's a higher proof
of something else, it's like,you know, it's just more
intense, it's more, just morepunch of the other version. But
in this it did feel like I couldsee the through line, but there
was a definite flavordifferential between them. You
got many different things comingout. And the 90 proof version,
(14:13):
honestly, was really impressive,not just for 90 proof, but in
addition, because it's 90 proof,having one of the best mouth
feels of a whiskey that I've hadat 100 proof or below this
entire year. So really greatstuff. And my first note when I
tried the stray rice whiskey,this is a 45% ABV, 90 proof, was
(14:35):
on the nose and the palate. Forthat matter, it tasted and
smelled like I knew this was arye, but it felt like it was a
new category of rye. And yes, Iknew it was a new country,
relatively new country for me,in the Rye style and all of
that, but it did feel different.So talking about the rye, well,
(14:58):
sorry, it's taken one step. Backas you are in a biosphere
reserve. So do you have any anylimitations put upon you as a
distiller, producer being in abiosphere reserve?
Bastian Heuser (15:14):
No, we actually don't have too many limitations
in our daily work. I think,what, what, what I like about
the idea of of the bios, morethe aging part. So, in
comparison to, you know, wecould have opened a whiskey
(15:35):
distillery in Berlin. But whenit, when I think of whiskey, I
always think of nature. And youknow, it's, it's off, off the
off the off the track. It'ssomewhere out in the countryside
where things are nice. And Ithink that that definitely is
(15:58):
something. I prefer whiskies tobe aged in a nice atmosphere.
And we're not not a lot of carsdrive and, you know, pollute the
the the air, apart from that,all the fields that we get our
(16:23):
grains from, they are partiallyin the biosphere, partially
outside of the biosphere, butall surrounding our distillery.
But we don't really have toomany limitations. We even take
the water from here. So yeah,
David Levine (16:40):
that's fantastic. I mean, the reason I asked we
we've spoken to a couple ofdistilleries that are in, for
example, the UK, in an area ofoutstanding natural beauty, or
in a national park or somethingequivalent, where there are
sometimes significantlimitations put upon you because
of some regulation or sometitle. But no, that's good. And
as you mentioned, you're able toreally focus on local barley.
(17:04):
It's, you know, it's on thewebsite. It's not as I was
looking through the website, aspart of the research, I was
thinking to myself that, youknow, the local barley is
mentioned on the homepage, thatyou get your barley from, as you
said, farmers surrounding you,
Bastian Heuser (17:17):
local, right? Local, right? I'm sorry, no,
we're so
David Levine (17:21):
trained to say barley, wow, yeah, sorry, I'm
sure thank you for that. So yes,local rye from from the farmers
around you who are in and out ofthe biosphere, but around you,
the are you able to get 100% ofyour rye from there?
Bastian Heuser (17:39):
And yes, we get, basically, we would be able to
get 100% of our production fromhere. But in the beginning, we
did a we did something. Weactually stopped doing it for a
couple of years, but webasically created two mesh
(18:03):
builds, 200% rye mesh builds,one is 100% unmalted Rye. That's
all from the area here. And wewanted to have one mesh build
from 100% malted rye, but therewas no Moultrie anywhere near
(18:24):
here, and so we had to switch toit's about 450, kilometers from
here. There is a specialMoultrie called viaman, which is
quite famous, that they dospecial malts. And they were
(18:45):
able to offer us severaldifferent types of rye malt,
which is all German malt, Germanrye malt, but not all from here,
from the area. And then westarted to distill these two
mesh bills separately, but in inactual numbers. In the beginning
(19:08):
we it was like the split was 70%unmalted Rye from the region and
30% malted rye. And by now it's,it's actually 100% unmalted Rye
because he stopped producing themalted rye mesh bill for several
(19:28):
reasons. And yeah, so nowadaysit's really 100% from the fields
surrounding the area.
David Levine (19:36):
It's beautiful. It's very so. So, so as I
mentioned, it's on the website,but it doesn't, I feel like you
don't lean into it too hard,like there's a point where you
go to but you're not like, whereyou're the flavor of
Brandenburg, where the flavor ofthe biosphere reserve, it's very
much. Okay. Yes, we get the ridelocally, and we produce it here,
(19:58):
and age is here, but we. It'slike the word terroir is not
anywhere on there or anythinglike that. So was that more of a
conscious decision to be like,we're going to let people still
enjoy it and not focus on thisparticular aspect?
Bastian Heuser (20:12):
Yeah, I think things like terroir and this
very, very in a positive way,we're very nerdy kind of view of
things. I think we just feltvery uncomfortable with it
because we, we were notdistillers for, you know, 30
(20:34):
years, and we said, Okay, Imean, it's, it's for obvious
reasons. You take the grain thatgrows around you. You don't need
a diploma for that. But, yeah,we, we, we didn't want to over
pronounce it. And, you know, we,we make whiskey from local rye,
(20:59):
from local water. But it's notto be our whiskey should, should
be fun, you know? It should beapproachable. It shouldn't be
too kind of nerdy. This, thatit's, yeah, as I said, we come
from bar background. We lovegreat cocktails, but it's it's
(21:23):
also about having fun in a bar.Not not only which vermouth you
use in the Manhattan, it's thepeople you drink it with.
They're more important for us.
David Levine (21:36):
So I want to pull up, I guess, to kind of a 30,000
foot view of whiskey in Germany,distilling in Germany. Just to
give Honestly, when I spoke tolast producer in Germany, we
didn't really focus too much onthat in particular, but it's
think it's really importantcontextually here. So from from
(21:56):
my perspective, you know,Germany is known as certainly a
big consumer of whiskey, a verystrong export market for a lot
of brands, one of the firstexport markets you're going to
go to, particularly in Europe.And obviously there's also a
strong domestic beer market, Imean, arguably known for that
(22:18):
more than any other alcoholicbeverage, maybe secondary, you
know, schnapps and some andfruit brandies. But that's,
that's kind of been the market.But domestic distillation of
whiskey as a as a whole, really,was very reason it started in
about 19/81 product in 1983 wasas you were starting, well, not
(22:43):
starting up from scratch, butyou know, starting stork club
and restarting the distilleryinto this new vision, and
learning about what you may haveknown already about, what the
German market and German historyof distillation is there, I
guess, is there any particularreason why distillation of
whiskey In particular did nottake off until later on.
Bastian Heuser (23:03):
I'm not quite sure why, because we've we've
been one of the first countriesin in Northern Europe to distill
grain. We've been distillinggrain since hundreds and
hundreds of years, but it justnever went into casks and was
aged as whiskey. Most of it wasactually drunk neat as the so
(23:28):
called Spirit on which is justan basically an unaged or
slightly aged, great braindistiller, white whiskey or
white dog, you know. So I don'tknow why, but especially with
(23:51):
the kind of context of being abeer nation, being a also a
bread nation, you know, withGermany is quite famous for its
variety in bread, and that wassomething we took, basically our
inspiration from, because it'srye bread is in Germany, somehow
(24:18):
it's A cultural heritage andfood culture, especially in the
northern part, and so that wasfor us, inspiration. Why we
never or why we started so lateproducing whiskey, I can't
really tell you, because we hadall the things that you need,
(24:42):
you know. But I supposedistilling, yeah, distilling,
Germany is kind of split intotwo parts. So the northern part
has always been distillinggrain, and the southern part was
always famous for its fruit anddistilled. Link fruit, so all of
(25:02):
the food brandies, maybe thiskind of, you know, separation
was also some reason why thiswas never really taken into
account. But as you said, yeah,definitely biggest, biggest
(25:24):
whiskey market in Europe by far,with 80 million people, lots of,
lots of people drinking whiskeyover here, yeah, and quite a bit
of American whiskey.
David Levine (25:36):
Yes, quite a bit. And that's really what I mean
when I was just speaking with,think my last interview as of
this, as of this interview,would have been with white peak
distillery, out of England, andthey said, you know, they're,
they're still fairly smallproduction, and they're growing
very, very the word is justescaping me right now, but with
(26:00):
A lot of purpose in terms ofwhere they're going first. And
they said Germany, Italy, werethe first countries that they
exported to, because those weremarkets that could were
interested and could handlethings. There is also something
that I find interesting aboutthe German market, and we don't
have to go on a big tangentabout this, but I love
(26:20):
mentioning it, which is that inthe rum category, and Pete to a
certain extent too, butespecially in the rum category,
brands from like Jamaica orwhoever making funky rums, the
funkiest stuff goes to Germanyas as a as a country, if I can
paint with a broad brush here.Love the I guess it's just that
(26:44):
you love the more intense outthere flavors. Perhaps it's not
about the gentle palette. It'slike, I want to be smacked in
the face with Jamaican funk onthis one. And I've always found
that fascinating, because it'snot really seen in the
surrounding countries. It'slike, No, we go to Germany with
with the hand of the state 1000plus Esther rums?
Bastian Heuser (27:03):
Exactly? Yeah, there is a red line, true,
because also the Nordiccountries, but Germany also is
one of the big markets forpitted whiskeys. So absolutely,
we seem to like it a bit morebold and but then maybe that
(27:31):
helps us with our rye whiskey.As as most, most rye whiskeys
are a bit more, yeah, a bit morepowerful and more bold and spicy
to clients or to customers thatcome in and do some tastings
(27:53):
with us. I always try or explainthem rye whiskey, comparing it
to bread. You know, a rye breadis dark, it's, it's bold, it's,
it's, has much flavor, whilst,yeah, other breads from from
white flowers are a bit less,less flavorful, or just more
(28:19):
easygoing. I like
David Levine (28:22):
what you said as well about the kind of divide of
northern and southern here, andhow that can really impact
things. I I think of theNorthern being more influenced
by, as you said, the Nordiccountries, to a certain extent,
Finland, Russia, up to yourNortheast, and whereas the
South, you're more with thefruit brandies being around
France, Italy, the countriesthat would have those kinds of
(28:46):
produce as well and and yet Istill go back to that. All these
countries have very strongdistilling traditions. Notably,
though, you know, I do want topoint out France, I think, has
maybe the most comparabledissonance there, where they had
a very strong, sorry, a strongdistilling culture of brandies
(29:07):
and Armagnacs and such, for along time, but not domestic
whiskey. Their domestic whiskey,I think, started in 1985 so been
about the same time. And shoutout to Mariana Tardy and Matthew
for our episode on on FrenchWhiskey a few weeks ago as well.
So as I was, I was looking intothis German market, there were a
(29:31):
lot of parallels that I sawthere. And you being a pure rye
distillery adds another level ontop of that. But some of the
similarities, you know, forexample, Germany has, I think it
was about just shy of 30, either20,000 or 30,000 breweries and
(29:51):
distilleries, licenses, yeah,vast majority are brandies.
White spirits. In terms ofwhiskey, you're talking more in
the low hundreds. And if you'retalking exclusively whiskey,
it's in the, you know, maybehigh dozens, under 100 and then
(30:14):
when you get to only rye, youguys, that's, yeah, you know,
yeah, the circle keeps gettingsmaller and smaller. So the I
guess I'm also somewhatsurprised that that market
hasn't taken off more, justbecause, you know, your your
rise is a little bit separate,but because there's such a
strong brewing tradition therewith with the malt, that they
(30:36):
didn't just take that next stepof, okay, we're going to brew it
and then we're going to distillit. But I agree with you as
well, in that the traditions offood. I mean, that's where a lot
of this comes from. And Germanrye bread, especially for you
know, as appropriate to youguys, it's known for being
German rye bread. You can tastewhat a German rye bread is
(30:57):
supposed to be, versus like aDanish rye bread or something
else, and it's delicious. Imean, I use German rye, German
pretzel crusts, things likethat, in my tasting notes,
frequently for somethingespecially if it has, like
roasted character or a darkcrust kind of character. And I
love it. I feel he's veryrepresentative of what it is.
(31:17):
And I thought about that whiletasting your whiskies, because I
did not want to automaticallyput that as a tasting note, if,
if it wasn't there, you know, soI will say it was there to a
point the roasted notes, which Ikind of equated almost to a
roasted rye, or, like a crystalmalt, kind of rye, but it was
(31:40):
still remarkably fruity as well.It had them. It wasn't super
light. It had a great mouthfeel, so it wasn't totally
stripped of the lower alcohols.But both versions, even despite
the flavor differences,inherently, had just Yeah, which
is a lot of flavor packed intoit. So I'd love to as we've
(32:01):
taken the 30,000 view of Germanwhiskey, come back down to store
club and say, All right, so youguys are making rye whiskey.
Now, when you converted overfrom single malt to rye, did you
have to change any of theequipment or processes
Bastian Heuser (32:21):
when we took over, the previous owner was
actually he didn't have meshtons of fermentation tanks. He
bought the the distillers beerfrom breweries surrounding the
(32:41):
area and then fermented in IBCTanks. So very well. How do you
say not at the highestprofessional level, with very
changing results? You know,yeah, depending on the weather.
(33:04):
And so we said, okay, that's,that's, that's not for us. We
want to have the equipmentready. We want to make our own
recipes. We don't want to be,want to be or want to have to
work, work with other breweriestogether. So we installed a mesh
ton fermenters, our own brainmill, so all everything that we
(33:30):
need. And at that point, wealready decided to only go
right, so there is no filterfiltration at any point of the
process. So we basicallydesigned our setup to only
distill rye. So when we get ourgrains, they are built on site
(33:56):
to a fine rye flour, and then wemesh, ferment and distill with
all the solids. So I always sayit's, it's kind of a whole grain
whiskey, you know, there's this,yeah, that's probably why you
get lots of flavor and mouthfeel. Because you we distill
(34:19):
with everything like, I guess alot of rye whiskey disagrees do
as well. I mean, we all have tothe problem with the gluey
proteins of the rye, and it'sgetting very sticky. So, yeah,
the the mentioned fruit notesthat you said that that you can
(34:42):
pick up in our whiskeys, atleast partially from our yeast
that we use, we use a bellscissor fruit beer yeast for our
fermentation and. So our whitedog, or new make, when you smell
(35:04):
and taste it, you pick upbanana, pear, cherry, so it's,
it's very, very fruity, estuarystyle of new make that we
created. I
David Levine (35:25):
always say it's a a it's a shame that new make
isn't more of a more available,I guess, because most new make
is not, is not considered to be,you know, a sellable product, or
it's not really considered ofmuch value until it's aged. But
when you have distilleries like,like you a lot of craft
(35:45):
distilleries that have spoken toboth of the US and elsewhere,
they talk about how good theirnew make is, and those are the
cases where I want to taste it,because I'm like, Okay, you're
making like, you know, you wantto make something that's really
good before it goes into thebarrel. Barrels at best. It's
going to hide a few things, butit's not going to fix bad white
dog. So I like that. I likethat. Those notes are ones that
(36:12):
you're, you know, looking forand getting. I i The cherry one
in particular was interesting. Iwas thinking to myself, I didn't
really get many stone fruitnotes, like a cherry plum
nectarine kind of thing. And forme, those, those do kind of,
they can kind of flow togethersometimes, yeah, I got a lot of
kind of less sharp citrus, so,like, either an orange or a
(36:39):
grapefruit marmalade, mm hmm,with some of the pith in there,
so it's got that little bit ofsweet, bitter, you know, yeah,
and just spreading that onfreshly toasted sourdough bread,
it was delicious. And I reallyenjoyed it because it had that
great mouth feel. It didn't justdissipate it, it lingered. So I
(37:00):
got more flavors evolving overtime. And you know, like I said,
the nose and initial palette didfeel different, so I didn't get
as many of those really strongspice like the black pepper
punches that rye usually has. Igot a little bit more on the
foolproof 110, proof, yes, buton the 90 proof, not as much. It
(37:23):
was very easy to drink it. Youcould tell that there was 90
proof. You could tell that therewere a lot of flavors in there.
Did not feel watered down onebit. And I, I loved that. So how
did you so just for one thing,just for confirmation then, so
you're able to get the grainfrom around you. So really, as
(37:45):
soon as the grain is dried tothe point that you need it to be
dried to to its moisturecontent, from that point on,
it's all you guys like. Youdon't have to send out to be
malted anywhere. You don't sendit to be milled anywhere. It's
all you until it goes in thebottle.
Unknown (37:59):
Absolutely. Yeah, which is a beautiful thing, yeah,
yeah, yeah. Do We? We?
Bastian Heuser (38:09):
We tried out rye malt, as I said, and we had our
own recipe spec for that, butwe've always been intrigued by
using unmalted Rye, actually,because we wanted to have that
kind of bold, bold flavor. We'vealways loved Robert rye whiskey
(38:41):
from Chicago, and we've beenexchanging a lot with him over
time. And yeah, we like thisstyle. And so we said, Okay, we
want to have that, that really,that grain from around the area,
(39:02):
not, not really do anything toit, but that pure grain flavor,
and we managed to to make, atleast from from my perspective,
a very smooth rye whiskey. It'snot, doesn't have that, really,
as you said, that that veryloads and loads of pepper and
(39:22):
spice. It's a bit more smoother,more on the fruity side.
Sometimes, for me, it sits inbetween a berm and a classical,
classical berm and a classicalAmerican rye, somewhere in
between there, because it hasfew more sweet notes.
David Levine (39:41):
Yeah, I can see that for sure. I mean, I was
thinking too of you taste rye.There's the categories you go
through. There's the citrus, theblack pepper, the is it herbal
or not? Is it and the 90 proofwas not super herbal. It was.
Was as I mean, as we said, itwas just very easy drinker, very
(40:03):
smooth in the way that we wantpeople to use the word smooth,
not just as a Yeah, yeah. Andthen in tasting the 110 proof,
that's when I got just a littlebit of, like tarragon and light
black licorice in there. Yeah,it wasn't so much that it was
distracting. I mean, I loveblack licorice anyway, so I
wouldn't have so I wouldn't havecared. But if I want something
(40:25):
that punchy with black licorice,I'll pull out my Absinthe or
something. Yeah, no, all thepieces felt very balanced, and
it didn't feel like it wastrying to be any particular
category of rye here in the US.And forgive me for pontificating
for 30 seconds, but like itfeels sometimes, like whenever a
(40:47):
new ride comes out, unlessyou've got a really small
distillery that has a vision inmind of something very
different, it always ends upbeing. Is it a barely legal rye?
Is it a Kentucky style, aMaryland style, Pennsylvania
style, 95 five MGP or 100% andthere's really very few
exceptionally, one of them justspoke with hodling and Co in San
Francisco. They've been doing100% malted Roth since the
(41:09):
beginning. So that obviouslyvery different. And so when you
get out of those kind of broadcategories and you taste
something new, like I felt likeit was doing with with this,
again, I keep saying thatbecause it was such a great
experience. They've tastedalmost 3500 whiskies at this
point. Like when I get to trysomething that genuinely feels,
(41:32):
oh, this is new to me. I'mexcited. I get excited. Yeah, I
wanted to ask too in the, youknow, the next stage of
operations. Shall we call it?You said to use a Bell says on
fruit beer yeast? Yes. So howdid you land on that?
Bastian Heuser (41:52):
Through lots and lots of trials with I don't know
how many different yeast strainswe tried out in the beginning,
we had a a colleague. He He is abrewer, and Richie was actually
(42:17):
brewing for some craft beerbreweries here in Germany. And
he was helping us out for forsix months, and was really
training us about the wholemashing, fermentation thing, you
know, everything, also cleaning,how to clean properly. That's
(42:43):
what a brewer can and with him,we actually worked on these
recipes and tried numerousdifferent yeast strains,
actually mostly from brewingbackground. And yeah. With that,
this is all yeast. We just said,Okay, that's it. That's exactly
(43:08):
what we like. It was such a nicenew make that we just say, okay,
that's that's exactly what wewant. It. It takes a lot longer
we ferment for a week or so, andit's not highly efficient at
all, but it just gives thatbeautiful flavor that we just
(43:32):
said, That's ours. This also
David Levine (43:36):
came from the conversation with white peak,
because they get their yeast,their live yeast, from
Thornbridge brewery in theircounty. And they, you know, they
crop it every week, and Tuesdayis fresh East day. And they were
saying they, I think it was fromthis conversation, if not
apologies Max, but that, youknow, they because they're using
(43:58):
brewers yeast rather than just adistillers yeast or a combo of
them, they're not trying todrive these to death in the
first 48 to 60 hours, like younormally would with the
distillers yeast, where it'sjust running hot and fast, and
by the end of two days, it'sdone, you want to let it go
longer, maybe get into somemalolactic fermentation at the
(44:21):
end for some more fruity estersas well. So you said you have a
week long fermentation. That'svery long for whiskey industry
as a whole. I do love it. I lovethose long fermentations because
the flavors you get so youmentioned are also the you had
to bring in fermenters. Soyou're doing open top and and
(44:41):
insulated, or what does thatlook like?
Unknown (44:44):
No our
Bastian Heuser (44:47):
we wanted to play very safe because of our
lacking knowledge. So we said,Okay, we we had some bad
experiences with some. Sometrials in the beginning with
open fermentation. And thenStephen said, Dude, I'm not
(45:08):
risking this. This is I justdon't know enough at this point.
Let's play safe. So we gotclosed fermentation, stainless
steel fermenters. They all havea mixer to to blend the ferment
(45:29):
because of all the brain that'sstill in there, and they are
double walled so we can we cancool or warm them, warm the
fermenting mesh, if we want,always keeping it in a safe
space at what 25 to maximum 30degrees during that time. And
(45:56):
yeah, just letting the yeast dotheir work and give them time to
do so
David Levine (46:03):
look, respect to Stefan for saying, Look, I
don't, this is the limit of myknowledge. I'm gonna, let's play
this safe here that more peopleshould, should say things like
that. So, the, what was the nextplace I wanted to go with that?
The Okay, so you're fermentingfor about a week. You get thing,
(46:25):
you're, then you're going intothe stills. And you said you're,
you're not loudering it out,you're distilling, nope,
everything goes into the still.So, so what is your still setup
look like
Bastian Heuser (46:38):
then? So once we are ready, after that week, we
pump the mesh. We have twostilts. One has 1000 liter
capacity in the other one, 650and they're both fairly
classical hybrid pots. So firstdistillation takes place in a
(47:01):
classical pot still. Seconddistillation takes place in a
small column still with fiveplates. That's yeah, small
setup. Really, really, yeah,really, really, really, similar
to a lot of distilleriesnowadays, in the US, in the
(47:22):
craft distilling community, Ithink they use a lot of those,
and they are from, yeah, thosestills are from two German,
small German producers ofstealing distilling equipment,
Of course, from the southernpart of Germany, so used, they
(47:45):
are used, or they have been useda lot in audiovi Making as well.
And yeah, first distillation inthe pot still we get from our
mesh, our fermented mesh, hasabout nine and a half to, yeah,
(48:05):
nine and a half not not we'renot really reaching 10% alcohol
by volume. So 20 proof and we gowith that into our still, first
destination in the pot stillgets us to about 60 proof and
30% alcohol by volume. And thensecond distillation, we run
(48:30):
completely through those fiveplates, and we get to roughly
about 75% ABV, 150 proof, yeah,in on average.
David Levine (48:44):
Then from there, where do you prove down to go
into the barrels.
Bastian Heuser (48:52):
Yeah, we get to 150 proof. And then we take
local water. We just strip it ofeverything and clean it and then
add add that to our new make,and we go into barrels at 120
(49:12):
proof, 60% alcohol by volume, soa bit lower than in Scotland,
for example, 63.5 usually is thecase. I'm not quite sure. I've
heard lots about Americandistillers, especially in the
south, going even lower, at 110proof and an even lower into
(49:36):
barrels, and we just wanted toavoid too much tenants. In Rye
is spicy in itself, and so we'realways quite careful about
tenants. So we didn't want to gotoo high into our barrels.
Understood
David Levine (49:57):
and the barrels themselves are an interesting
part of your equation. Equation.So I want to devote time to that
as well. I want to pause justfor a second, because this is
important to where theproduction goes from here, which
is that, as you know, as part ofthe EU you're subject to certain
regulations on whiskey. That's,you know, it's got to be three
(50:17):
years old to be called Whiskey,and a number of other things as
well. But in Germanyspecifically, are there any, I
guess, German specificregulations on what makes a
whiskey or a rye or anythinglike that?
Bastian Heuser (50:35):
No, this. This is actually regulated through
the EU and the EU regulationsare almost almost similar to
Scotch whiskey, but there aresmall little things that we are
(50:59):
allowed to use and still call itwhiskey, while Scotland
couldn't, or Ireland, forexample, other woods besides.
OK, so we could age in Chestnut,we could age in Cherry and still
call it whiskey after threeyears. But that's apart from
that, it's pretty much the same,yeah. So it has to be grain. It
(51:25):
has to be distilled, not higherthan, I think, what 85 or 86
ABV, something like that. Andthen needs to age in barrels of
a certain size, maximum 700liter barrels for these three
years in a day, and then putwhiskey on
David Levine (51:48):
it. So the reason I paused there was because,
again, your your barrels arehave an interesting story in
themselves. So use both Americanand German oak. So I didn't see
any experimentation with, as yousaid, like the chestnut or chair
yet. So, you know, we'll see,see, if you want to, but
Bastian Heuser (52:06):
yeah, the first 1010, years were dedicated to,
you know, making, making goodwhiskey, and then experimental
things will come in the next 10years. Now, fair enough. And
David Levine (52:17):
with the the two stills of 1000 liter and then
650 so I would think a runprobably gets you about two,
maybe two and a half barrelsMax.
Bastian Heuser (52:25):
Um, yeah, one, well, two runs on our 1000 liter
still gets us one barrel ofwhiskey. So you could say if we
run both stills, one run, onebarrel on both fields, yes,
David Levine (52:42):
gosh. So again, not, you know, massive levels of
production, but enough that youcan put out your product. You
can export a little bit atleast, and get your name out
there. Which, which I love. Sothe barrels using American oak,
German oak, and I've seen thethe I the epithet of its
(53:05):
Napoleonic oak. So explain whatthat means.
Unknown (53:09):
Yeah, yeah.
Bastian Heuser (53:12):
We said, Okay, we always need it. Need American
oak because it's just has moresugars and you get more more of
that vanilla, toffee, caramelflavor from the American oak,
European org in itself is, ofcourse, a different species than
(53:33):
American, or has much moretenants, And, yeah, grows a lot
longer as a bit more on thespices file, unless you age a
lot longer than it willbasically disappear again. But
therefore, we said, Okay, we, ofcourse, we want to have some,
(53:57):
some local or national, youknow, we've got huge, huge
forests in Germany and and thereis one part in the south, south
western part of Germany, righton the French border, lots and
lots of oak Tree forests, oakforests. And then we say, okay,
(54:22):
we we want to, we want to havesome, some German or in our
whiskey, just to differentiateit from American riot, it needs
to have its own story. So wethen talk to our Cooper, and he
said, Well, he has reallyamazing trees over there, and
(54:47):
they are called Napoleon trees,because these trees are at least
250 years old before they arebeing cut down and made into
barrels. And that means thatthese, this forest, and these,
these trees were actuallyalready a tree when Napoleon was
(55:10):
born, and through those forestswent a lot of history. So not
only two World Wars, but also,you know, Napoleonic walls. So
our Cooper actually, when hecuts down those those trees, he
basically has to X ray for anyammunition still sticking in the
(55:35):
in those trees. Fun fact, sothat you can't you, of course,
you're not allowed to use thoseif there are any any lead in
there. And we just love this,the kind of story, these old
trees that have seen so muchhistory and are now used for
(55:59):
whiskey making, and they imparta very distinct flavor, I would
say, I I'd always define it morein terms of, like dried fruits,
lots and lots of of not nuttyflavor. And then you have the
(56:21):
tenants that really go through,especially in the first three
years. You actually need to agewhiskey longer than that in
those barrels to to get throughthe tenant phase and get more of
a of a fruity sweetness, butthere's no vanilla, there's no
caramel, there's no Yeah, it's atotally different set of aromas
(56:46):
than those.
David Levine (56:48):
That's fascinating, because I
definitely let them know. So Igot the American oak profile,
yeah, clear, because that'syou're using new American oak.
Bastian Heuser (56:56):
Yes, we use no ex bourbon barrels, but mainly
virgin American oak. Yeah,
David Levine (57:02):
right. So you're getting, you know, the full, the
full brunt of, as you said, thevanilla is the buttery coconut,
some of the baking spices inthere. And I was thinking, I
don't, I don't remember havingtried previously anything
specifically using German oak,certainly not Napoleonic oak, I
feel like that would have reallystood out in my mind if I had so
(57:25):
let's say I haven't triedNapoleonic oak before, and that
was one of my one of thequestions I was most excited to
ask you was, what is the Germanoak to for the profile and the
dried Fruit? Works great inthere. The Yeah, it it's
fascinating to me that thereisn't very much vanilla in
(57:45):
there. I associate vanilla withmost oak species to some level,
or at least baking species, I'msure. But you're also this goes
into a whole conversation aboutwood quality that I know my
friend John would definitelyappreciate, and some others as
well, where you're talking aboutold growth wood. So not only are
(58:09):
these trees old, but becausethey're older, they've got older
environments that they wereaging in, older climates. They
were aging in different airquality, water quality, soil
quality. They're probablytighter grained than newer oak
is. So that's going to add, inaddition to the flavors present,
(58:29):
it's going to do all this. It'sgoing to be less porous. It's
going to have a little bit lessoxidation there. So that's going
to add things. And then, to me,that adds so much character to a
whiskey that you could haveanother German rye distillery
pop up that also uses quote,unquote, German oak, but if
they're not using the non Coke,it's going to be very different.
(58:53):
Yeah, I think that's
Bastian Heuser (58:56):
absolutely, absolutely, although I always
have to say and I actually liketo say this, that the forests
where our Cooper cuts, thosetrees, right next to the French
border, actually, this area hasbeen, over the past 100 years,
(59:19):
has been French German, FrenchGerman, French German, French
German, French German. Yeah,through all those wars, it's,
it's always been, you know,belonging to either one of
those, those two nations. And Ialways like to pronounce that,
(59:40):
that it's just, you know, it'sthat, that reason, and that
region. And it's not about,about German, it's, I think it's
just the area, and it's thequality of the wood there. And,
of course, you have other. Areregions in Europe where you get
(01:00:02):
awesome wood, but, yeah, thatthat's just a very special thing
about those trees is actuallythat long, lasting history and,
and I can't claim it as being aGerman tree. I it's, you know,
it's multinational.
David Levine (01:00:25):
I think, I think calling into polionic is, is
probably the most appropriate. Imean, he's Yes, yes, gonna
represent both countries at somepoint. He's gonna own both
countries at some point, yeah,for better or worse,
Unknown (01:00:38):
true, you know.
David Levine (01:00:39):
So I know, I think it's a good way to put it,
understanding that there aren'ta ton of these casks available,
because I don't know how manyother distillers are using them,
and then you're not doing a tonof production. Are these
particular barrels in demand inthe second market, like once you
guys are done with
Bastian Heuser (01:01:00):
them? I don't think they are super sought
after. I couldn't, I couldn'tsay that they are specifically
sought after. I guess a lot ofpeople in especially in the
(01:01:21):
aftermarket, a lot of breweriesor distilleries are still always
looking for money American orfor more sweetness, and that
type of would You You have to becareful with those Napoleon
(01:01:42):
barrels, because they are very,very powerful. So in our, for
example, in our straight dry inthe beginning we, I think we had
like 25% or in our first tries,we had like 25% of those
Napoleon oak barrels in there.But it was too, too much. So we
(01:02:08):
had to kind of tone it back alittle bit, because they're just
very intense in flavor, which iswhich is good, but you just have
to be careful how you use itotherwise, of course, if, if
we'd be older, and you, I thinkif you age a lot longer, then
(01:02:28):
this will wear down and willmake beautiful whiskies. We've,
we've had a couple of singlebarrel releases of those
barrels, and they really turnout awesome. So,
David Levine (01:02:43):
I yeah, I mean, I immediately, I thought of again,
because of of the stockavailable, the number available,
maybe a distillery is not thegreat place because it's might
not be able to use a lot, but Icould see a brewery taking on
these casks to age, perhaps astout or a porter or something
like that. Not, as you said, notsuper long, if it's that
(01:03:04):
powerful. But, you know, put itin for, I'm not a, I'm not a
huge dark beer guy, so I don'tknow the terminology or the
usual sphere, but let's sayusing six months for usual,
maybe it's a month or twoinstead. Yeah, because that's
all I need.
Bastian Heuser (01:03:19):
Yeah, we do work with together with breweries.
We've got a couple of breweriesin Berlin that make really
awesome beer, and we've hadprojects with them where they
actually they won the story.Even made a rye wine, so a
(01:03:42):
fairly high proof rye beer withour rye mold, aged it in our rye
whiskey barrels, then we gotthose back, aged our whiskey in
and stuff like that. Of course,we we did that, and that's lots
of fun. I really I'm a hugeperson. I'm a huge fan of a boy,
(01:04:07):
of a good Boiler Maker. Goodbeer next to good whiskey is
just nice. Love it.
David Levine (01:04:14):
So I'm going to put a pin in that part, because
I want to talk aboutcollaboration for sure. Just to
close out our processconversation with the maturation
So, as you said at thebeginning, you're able to mature
on site or nearby, in thispristine environment. So what
does your maturation setup looklike? You're doing dunnage
(01:04:35):
ripped what it
Unknown (01:04:37):
looks like we have
Bastian Heuser (01:04:40):
basically two warehouses. They are brick,
brick walls and a just a regularroof on top of it, but lots of
air can access under the roof,so it's open. So. Them, and then
(01:05:01):
they are rigged, not palletized.And we have about 1200 barrels
of aging stock, so it's verysmall production, but two of
those warehouses are on theground floor and in the
(01:05:23):
summertime we get to roughlywhat 25 to up to 30 degrees
Celsius in those warehouses. Andwe have one. It's called our
microwave. We have one warehousedirectly under the roof on the
first floor of our production,where it gets to it gets another
(01:05:46):
five degrees hotter, and this iswhere, where, basically our
honey barrels are really Aging.It does age more quickly than on
the ground floor and brick in abrick building, and lots of wood
(01:06:10):
surrounding those, those barrelsand yeah, and in general,
Temperature wise, in Germany, orin our area, in Germany, we get
quite cold winters, belowfreezing point, and then
somewhere around zero degrees inthe warehouses and the
summertime, yeah, about 30degrees Celsius. I never really
(01:06:33):
know how much that is in fahret,but you maybe, you know I'm
David Levine (01:06:41):
trying to the math my head in 30s, about 90 days or
so, something
Bastian Heuser (01:06:45):
like that. Yeah, I think so. I think so 990 95
somewhere around there. So it'snot as hot in Kentucky, exactly.
It's not super hot, but it'sdouble as hot as in Scotland or
Ireland. So, yeah, I was gonna
David Levine (01:07:02):
say it's been, it's been that hot or hotter
here in New York for severaldays.
Bastian Heuser (01:07:06):
Yeah. Can imagine
David Levine (01:07:11):
that's, I mean, you have the advantage to it
being more inland, so you'renot, yeah, so, you know, the
more inland and more and moretemperate, so you don't have
these huge swings, but enough toto mature. You know, you said it
has to be three years old, but Ithink most your products are at
least four.
Bastian Heuser (01:07:32):
Yeah, yeah. We are getting to four and a half
to five years in as a as astandard for our whiskeys now,
yeah, and of course, we'retrying to get older and older
with stuff, but we feel quitecomfortable with around five
years. I think a lot of ryewhiskeys have a have a sweet
(01:07:55):
spot at five years. For me,personally, I
David Levine (01:07:59):
love that you use the phrase sweet spot, because I
was just throwing this in hereas a as a side note that I saw.
Are there still any bottlesavailable of that Christina Tosi
inspired serial killer?
Bastian Heuser (01:08:12):
No, they've been, they've been sold out
fairly quickly. But that thatthat was one Limited Edition.
People just talked about somuch. It was so much fun. So,
yeah, coming, coming from a bar,we always, we always thought
whiskey is kind of a, you know,I wouldn't say elite, but, you
(01:08:35):
know, it's, it's sometimes a bitold fashioned. And especially,
especially from a Europeanperspective, you know, you
always look at that traditionalscotch and Irish, you know,
don't, don't even add water orice, otherwise you get stabbed
in the back. So we always liketo excuse the French around with
(01:08:58):
the whiskey. And for thatspecific cereal killer whiskey,
we infused breakfast cereals,six different breakfast cereals,
into our rye whiskey, inspiredby Miss Tosi and her milk bar
and her cereal cereal milk thatshe makes ice cream from and
(01:09:22):
other desserts, I guess. So weused Fruit Loops and honey pops
and cinnamon is and, yeah,infuse them in our rye whiskey,
filter it and put it in abottle. And it's an amazing
whiskey. I love it. I
David Levine (01:09:42):
was gonna say I couldn't find many reviews, just
because it was a very limitedrelease, of course. But I feel
like that's one of those thingsthat would either be just mind
blowing the delicious or like agimmick one time, I think. But
it sounds like it came up prettywell, so I'll
Bastian Heuser (01:09:59):
yeah. Yeah, we didn't, we didn't sweeten it any
further. So all the sweetened, Imean, there's lots of sugar in
all of those cereals, and it, itwas kind of, it's kind of like
an old fashioned in a bottle.And that made it, made it
nicely, and it still had 45% abvand yeah, so, but you can try
(01:10:25):
that at home if you want to.This is true.
David Levine (01:10:29):
So unless the segment I've got you for, there
are two areas that I really wantto talk about. And one is, as I
said earlier, is thecollaboration point of view. So
that's collaboration for you,but also within the German
whiskey market, but also whatthe reception has been. So I
(01:10:51):
think let's start thecollaboration is because I saw
in one of the products you hadcollaborated with st Killian,
another distillery. There aremalt distillery mainly, and as
you mentioned, you'vecollaborated with breweries in
as far as you know, exchangingbarrels and things like that. So
(01:11:11):
I often, or we often hear, withthe American craft market and
American craft scene thatthey're very collaborative. They
love sharing ideas and doing, ifnot cross distillery blends, at
least sharing thoughts andprocesses and that. It's very
collaborative. People are kind.They're willing to help out, and
everything goes along with that.How has how is the German
(01:11:35):
distilling scene, particularlywhiskey distilling scene, like
is it seen as prettycollaborative, and people are
helping out rising tide liftsall boats type of thing, or is,
or is it a little more
Bastian Heuser (01:11:47):
isolated, I would say so and so. You always
have people who arecollaborative, who see that you
need to work on a category. AndI think that's, that's something
we definitely have to work on. Ithink the the English whiskey
(01:12:10):
industry did that quite well toget a profile internationally
over the last years. So inGermany, you have that one, one
part that really sees the bigpicture and does collaborations.
And St Kitts is one of one ofthem, and who make was seriously
(01:12:35):
in the whiskey kind of mindset,and make seriously making
whiskey and but you also haveother examples. I guess that's
it'll be pretty much the same ina lot of other countries. But of
course, you have verytraditional distilleries that
(01:12:57):
are in existence since, I don'tknow how many years, and
they're, of course, moreconservative, conservative than
people like us that you know didsomething from scratch And yeah,
(01:13:18):
and through our history, we arequite connected internationally.
So sometimes we work togetherwith German distilleries or
brewers. But we also had andhave projects with international
with distilleries from othercountries. So it's, a, it's a
(01:13:40):
wild mix. But I'm still seeingin Germany. I'm still seeing a
lack of, kind of, do we have acertain identity? Do we want to
have a certain identity asGerman? Risky, because there are
some so many things that we canbe inspired from, be it bread,
(01:14:02):
be it beer, be it fruit, all ofthese, be it wine, we've got
great wine. So there's lots,lots of stuff to choose from,
and maybe that sometimes makesit hard to have a a certain
profile in the German whiskeybusiness. You know, we've got
(01:14:24):
single malt whiskey makers thatare inspired by brewing. You've
got us more inspired from, Idon't know, bar and bread and
other things and so, yeah, Ithink that that's still, maybe
that still has to come. We'restill not, not connected, and
(01:14:45):
not too much working on, on onegoal in Germany. That's, that's
how I would kind of define wherewe are currently
David Levine (01:14:58):
in Germany. Yeah. I understood. And is there, I
admittedly should have lookedthis up before I started the
interview. But is there, like aGerman whiskey guild, or
something like that created?
Bastian Heuser (01:15:10):
Yes, yeah, there is a German whiskey guild. We
are part of it, just rathershortly or since, since just a
few few months now. But ofcourse, that's that's a way to
(01:15:31):
network and to see where thingsgo and head. Yeah, we'll see
where, where that will will goto and, yeah,
David Levine (01:15:46):
love it. So aside from my from the last question
that I'll save till the end thelast series that I wanted to ask
you about, which is, yeah, whatis the reception been like? And
I'm talking local, domestic,international, as you've rolled
it out over almost the last, Iguess, not quite 10 years,
because you've had to sleep fornine plus you need a maturation.
(01:16:08):
So let's say the last halfdecade, as you've started
rolling out, what is thereception been like?
Bastian Heuser (01:16:13):
In general? We are very happy how things were
received, how our whiskeys werereceived. It's not it's been a
hell of a ride taking over adistillery, and yeah, coming
from scratch and making whiskey.But so far, we especially
(01:16:35):
starting here locally, in asmall, little village with 619,
inhabitants, where thedistillery is it? It was a tough
start, but nowadays, we reallyget along with everyone, and
we've been well received. Wehave lots and lots of tours,
(01:16:59):
distillery tours and tastingsnowadays, here getting lots and
lots of visitors, actually, inour small little village, about
30 to 40,000 visitors in betweenMay and September. Not everyone
will go to our distillery, butmost of them, because there's
(01:17:19):
just one street and a distilleryand a brewery and some
restaurants, you know. So sothat that's been working well,
and then at some point westarted
Unknown (01:17:31):
to go
Bastian Heuser (01:17:34):
into bars and specialists, retail and in bars,
it really works very well. We'rereally happy, because we always
aim to be the Europeanalternative to American whiskey
with our style and our mixability. And we just wanted to
(01:17:58):
offer something local that youcan make classical whiskey
drinks with, with that kind ofYeah, local touch. And that was,
was very, very good and wellreceived. So now in in most of
in most of all the good cocktailbars in Germany, you'll see a
(01:18:23):
bottle of our whiskey, and theyknow about us. Specialist retail
a bit different because of afairly conservative German
whiskey crowd, mostly drinkingscotch single malt. And if
they're if they have a good day,they might try Irish whiskey,
(01:18:44):
but they're really but it's veryconservative when it comes to
rye whiskey, or whiskey fromother countries, even their own,
here in Germany. So that's beenso and so. But we, we have our
our client here, and we're stillgrowing and in export, we I
(01:19:09):
think we had a good start, butthen, of course, he had things
like covid, then the Ukrainianwar, and high inflation. So that
definitely wasn't helpful tobuild export business the way we
(01:19:32):
wanted to. But I guess you justhave to. I mean, in whiskey, in
whiskey, you have to have time.So you have to have have the
time to do this also, and it'sjust not stealth explainable
whiskey from Germany. You haveto have someone in another
(01:19:55):
country to actually explain whatwe do. And it's. It's just not
very traditional. So that'sthat's, of course, not super
easy, but it's also a chance,you know, you have to find the
right people to talk good, goodabout your your whiskey, and if
you find them, it'll work out.So no one would have thought 10
(01:20:20):
years ago that they make gin inGermany, and then monkey 47
sells to PANORA car. So
Unknown (01:20:32):
we'll see. We'll see. Yeah, you
David Levine (01:20:37):
love me some monkey 47 I have to. I like the
simple gins, and then I like the47 ingredients. Ingredient ones
as well. So best. And thank youso much for for talking about
store club. I want to end whereI always end, which is, you
know, you're almost a decade in,you've had previous experience
(01:20:57):
in the beverage alcoholindustry. You are seem pretty
tuned into what is going on inGerman distilling as well. So in
the future, what do you wantyour legacy in that of stork
club to be?
Unknown (01:21:18):
I think I just
Bastian Heuser (01:21:20):
want people to say Star Club fucking good
whiskey. That'll be if peoplealso say that in 50 years, then
everything is fine.
David Levine (01:21:35):
Love it. All right. Well, with that vessel.
Thank you so much. Hang on withme for just a minute after I
finished the recording, thisbeen another episode of The
whiskering podcast. As always,take a look at the show notes,
where you'll see not onlyinformation about store, club,
anything I might have missed inthe notes. So we didn't get to
taste notes for the whiskies Iwas able to try, as well as
where you can buy them,certainly in the US and then
(01:21:59):
through the online store aswell. Really worth trying. And I
meant to say this as well. Theseare exceptionally priced
whiskeys. We're talking 40 ishfor the straight ride, maybe 60
ish or so for the foolproof I'mkind of remembering the numbers
(01:22:19):
off the time have but notexpensive for you know, what I
think is a high quality andpalette intriguing German rye
whiskey. So take a look at theshow notes in the episode
description. Wherever youlisten. Thank you all for
listening, liking andsubscribing and rating us. It
really helps the podcast, andI'll see you all next week. You.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal
Gregg Rosenthal and a rotating crew of elite NFL Media co-hosts, including Patrick Claybon, Colleen Wolfe, Steve Wyche, Nick Shook and Jourdan Rodrigue of The Athletic get you caught up daily on all the NFL news and analysis you need to be smarter and funnier than your friends.