Bourbon With Friends
Welcome to Bourbon With Friends. THE bourbon podcast, that never takes itself too seriously! Pull up a chair, grab a glass and remember. A bourbon with friends can change the world! Join Bryan, Adriane, and Martin as they explore everything our nation spirit has to offer. From reviews that won't have you needing a thesaurus to understand, to kicking it with celebrities, musicians, athletes or your everyday bourbon or whisk(e)y drinker. Bourbon With Friends has everything you have been looking for in a whisk(e)y podcast!
Bourbon With Friends
Wilderness Trail Distillery: From a back closet to a 100+ Acre Whiskey Campus
Guest Name: Dr. PatHeist
Guest Company: Wilderness Trail Distillery
Guest Website: https://www.wildernesstraildistillery.com/en-us/
Guest Social Media:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wildernesstraildistillery/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WildernessTrailDistillery/
Twitter/X: https://x.com/i/flow/login?redirect_after_login=%2FWTDistillery
Sponsor Website: https://10thwhiskey.com/ use code “BWF15” for 15% off
Sponsor Social Media:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/10thmtnwhiskey
Instagram: https://instagram.com/10thmtnwhiskey
Facebook: https://facebook.com/10thmtnwhiskey
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@10thmtnwhiskey
BWF Patreon: patreon.com/bwfpodcast
BWF Website: https://bourbonwithfriends.com/
BWF Social Media:
Twitter: https://www.x.com/bourbonwfriends
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bwfpodcast
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/107578977683627
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@bourbonwithfriends
Follow us on:
www.bourbonwithfriends.com
Instagram: @bwfpodcast
Facebook: BWFPodcast
Tik tok: bwfpodcast
YouTube: Bwfpodcast
It's time for Bourbon with Friends, the bourbon podcast that never takes itself too seriously. Pull up a chair, grab a glass and remember, a bourbon with friends can change the world. Here we go.
SPEAKER_00:Hey everybody, welcome to Bourbon Friends. This is Joe, the editor, and we have Ryan Thompson here from Tenth Mountain Whiskey and Spirit Company. He's our proud sponsor of this podcast and he will be joining for this interview today. So Ryan, why don't you give our listeners a little bit of background about yourself.
SPEAKER_02:Hey, thanks, Joe. I appreciate it and appreciate being here with everyone from Bourbon with Friends. It's a special day for me with the interview we have going on. But I've been a fan of the show from behind the scenes for a long time now. When Brian and company took it over about a year, a year and a half ago, Brian and I are close friends and we got to talking about it. And so I thought it was something that I should probably sponsor from a business perspective, just because of all the passion and excitement around the industry and around Bourbon with Friends. And so happy to be on this side of the table to be on the interviewing side and have a special guest today with Dr. Pat Heist from Wilderness Trail. And so I couldn't be more excited. It's quite an honor for me to interview one of my mentors over the last 10 years and somebody I've looked up to in the business. So I'm excited to be here and excited to pick Pat's brain a little bit about what's going on with Wilderness
SPEAKER_00:Trail. Yes, most definitely. And here we have Mr. Pat Heist from Wilderness Trail.
SPEAKER_02:All right, guys.
SPEAKER_00:Good morning, sir.
SPEAKER_03:Hey, Dr. Pat. Welcome, sir. Yeah, great to be here. Thanks for the flattering introduction.
SPEAKER_02:Hey, man, we're just getting started. I'm going to try to make you blush here right now. So let's see how good of a job I can do because I want to give you an introduction. But before I get into that, I want to certainly give a shout out and a thank you to the Campari Group, to the Wilderness Trail Distillery, to Pat Heiss for hosting Joe and I and a couple other folks from a media perspective at the distillery a couple of weeks ago. It was an incredible trip, an incredible experience. Got to taste, obviously, some amazing whiskeys and got to hang out with Dr. Pat for a couple of days and So just a big shout out and a big thank you to the whole group there. Pat, you have a couple of years under your belt here now, man. You're a wise fellow is what I like to say, man. You were born and raised in Kentucky. You got a BS, an MS, and a PhD, all from the University of Kentucky. Not a lot of people can say that. So Dr. Pat is one of the smartest fellows in the industry. So kudos to him on that. You served as a professor of medical micropathology at the Kentucky College of Osteopathic Medicine. So there's that, right? That sounds incredibly cool. In 2006, you founded Firm Solutions with business partner Shane Baker. I'm sure Shane will come up on a time or two during this conversation For everyone that does not know what Firm Solution is, it's a consultancy and supplier specializing in yeast strains, enzymes, antimicrobials, and fermentation support for distilleries, wineries, breweries, and the fuel industry worldwide. Basically, anybody that makes ethanol, you work with is what it sounds like. Uh, in 2013, you and Shane decided to start your own distillery wilderness trail in Danville, Kentucky, make it a Danville's first legal distillery since prohibition, which, which is always a nice feather in somebody's cap. Uh, you started with pot still batches and then, uh, expanded soon thereafter in 2016 with column stills. Uh, and then, uh, got to subsequent subsequent growth from that, uh, ultimately becoming one of the top bourbon producers, uh, not only Kentucky, but, uh, worldwide, which is, uh, incredibly impressive. Uh, You got a lot of recognition. Wilderness Trail was honored as Kentucky's manufacturer of the year in 2016. You and Baker were named EY Entrepreneurs of the Year in 2020. which is damn cool. Uh, the distillery became the 18th official stop on the Kentucky bourbon trail in 2020. So while everyone's dealing with COVID here, you are just out there kicking ass still. Uh, and then October, 2022 Campari group acquired, uh, what is it? 70% stake, I believe, uh, to help aid in the further expansion. And we'll probably get in some of those details as well. Uh, and one fun fact for everybody is that, uh, Dr. Heist, uh, has a TEDx talk out there. So you got to go check that out too. So, uh, uh, Did I do all right, Dr. Pat? Did I miss anything in your longest season? Oh, yeah,
SPEAKER_03:no.
SPEAKER_02:No, that was pretty thorough there. I don't know what else I got to offer now after that. Well, to put a bow on it, he was out blue crab fishing this morning, so how about that?
SPEAKER_03:That's right. I'm no good at that, so I'm working on that accolade, building it up a little bit. I also do play in a rock band called Zella Mae, so if anyone gets on Spotify, check it out. There you go. Say the name again. It's called Zella, Z-E-L-L-A, May, M-A-Y, and put an exclamation point after it. For some reason, I think my drummer put an exclamation point, so that's the only way you find it.
SPEAKER_02:So if your whiskey career doesn't go in the right direction, you can always fall back on your rock career. Is that what you're saying?
SPEAKER_03:That's right. If the listeners would just give that a listen, I think five views would double our total.
SPEAKER_02:I love it, man. I guess one more thing is that you are a pinball aficionado as well. I know that about you. Pinball? Yeah. Oh,
SPEAKER_03:yeah, I play it.
SPEAKER_02:I've seen you been playing it late at the bars one night, so we'll save that for another time. Yeah, go ahead, Joe. I was
SPEAKER_00:going to say, so, Pat, can you, you know, like, again, thank you for your hospitality when you invited us out there. We both had a great time. You're amazing. Your facility is awesome. Can you give us maybe a rundown? I mean, we've been there. We've seen it. But maybe give us a rundown for our listeners on your acreage, number of rack houses, your stills. Just give us a little breakdown of your distillery and what your production is maybe per day, per week, or whatever.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. So I'll preface where we're at today with where we were at 13 years ago for a little encouragement for anyone looking to start a business is we were only making one barrel a day on a 200 gallon pot still 13. years ago. That's how we started the distillery. Today, we, and that was actually in the back room of our firm solutions business. Today, we're on 165 acre campus, have about 300,000 barrels stored across 17, 24,000 barrel rickhouses. And we have our still, we have our 200 gallon pot still, but in addition, we've got a 16 inch diameter. That's how you are 18 inch diameter, right? Whether you refer to column stills by their diameter, they're actually 43, 44 feet high. But an 18-inch diameter column and a 36-inch diameter column together, those are capable of producing 220 barrels of bourbon a day at our facility. So that's kind of where we're at now, 165-acre campus. And I think we get around... tens of thousands of visitors a year on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail. So it's really blossomed into a heck of a business and a heck of a brand over the last 13 short years. That's
SPEAKER_00:awesome. Yeah, actually, well, both Brian and a couple of other hosts, we actually have a close friend who's actually in Kentucky right now doing the trail. They actually own property, I think somewhere outside of Lexington. And they've been I know every year they go and they're going to, they'll probably visit you. And of course, some of your other friends and or competitors, depending how you want to see how you want to say it. Yeah. Uh, so, uh, so Shane, uh, I'm sorry, Pat, you and Shane started a firm solutions before launching on this trail. Was there any moment that you knew it was time to start or what was there a moment when you knew it was time from going, helping others to making your own stuff?
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:I mean, you know, we thought about it a lot. You know, we're here in Kentucky, so it's always in our faces. We had a company, you know, that was marketing fermentation products to a lot of the big bourbon distilleries, you know, but over the course of the several years that we were running Firm Solutions, leading up to starting Wilderness Trail, I mean, our day-to-day jobs were to basically get customers that are going to buy yeast and other products to But second of all, to keep that business, you know, if the fermenter is not bubbling right, the yeast provider is the first one to get the phone call of, hey, man, something's not going right here. In fact, your yeast isn't working. So, you know, you got to kind of start there and figure out what's the real problem. So our day to day jobs were going into distilleries and breweries and trying to figure out what was the real problem. It's probably not the yeast. Is it the temperature? Is it the pH? Are you properly converting starch into ferment? Yeah, absolutely. kind of dawned on us that we probably know more about distilleries than anybody else in the world. So why don't we start our own distillery? So, you know, just at some point in time. And the other thing is we've got a couple other reasons besides just having the knowledge to start the distillery. We've got history, you know, we're both born and raised in Kentucky. My family's got a little bit of a, you can't really be multi-generational in Kentucky and not have some tie to the whiskey business. My great grandfather used to work for Seagram's Shane's family. has a very robust history in distilling. His grandmother worked at the Kentucky River Distillery, which is where Wild Turkey owns the bear warehouses there at Camp Nelson. She actually retired from the Stitzweller Distillery and met her husband, Shane's grandfather there. So deep distilling roots. So we've always kind of had it in our blood of, you know, let's start a distillery. It's just a cool thing to do. We're some of the hugest whiskey fans on the kind of dream of, golly, wouldn't it be cool to have our own distillery? But you got to have the knowledge, which we got through Firm Solutions, and you got to have capital, which we also got through Firm Solutions. And that led up to realizing the dream and starting the distillery. But definitely that family history played into it, as well as our experiences with Wilderness Trail, or Firm Solutions, rather. Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_02:Dr. Pat, you started with that pot still and then moved on to a couple other stills. You mentioned that 18-inch diameter column still as well. But when you just had the pot still and you're on 165 acres now, what did you guys originally start out with size-wise? I think, didn't you mention when we were out there, something like 13 acres and something, you didn't really have a thought that it was going to expand into something this big. Is that correct?
SPEAKER_03:Oh, yeah. I mean, our original size was... whatever the back closet in the back room of Firm Solutions.
SPEAKER_00:That's right.
SPEAKER_03:And the production part of it is one consideration. The equipment, where's that equipment going to go? You're producing a flammable liquid. What are the hazard concerns and all that? But the bigger concern is where are you going to store those barrels? So we had... probably 200 barrels stacked up in the back of our firm solutions building. And, and, you know, basically we had to build storage for that. So that was kind of the exodus of the back room of the firm solutions building to actually purchasing the property that we're on now that we built a small barrel warehouse. And that was, you know, that solved that problem. And so we didn't just start off on this farm. We, we start off in the back of our other business, you know, we built a group, strapping this thing in the beginning.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that's great, man. I love that. While you were scaling it up to the size it is now, what were some of the biggest challenges in growing this deal?
SPEAKER_03:Well, I think that for us, a lot of the challenges were really around just the capital and things, which we were able to navigate around because Shane's a great business guy. We're kind of we both have a knack for identifying opportunities. And, you know, one thing in addition to us having a dream of creating a great brand, the opportunity came for contract production. So kind of in the middle of a, we're building a new steel and we're going to increase our production. We also had several opportunities that were presented of making barrels for other brands. And so that, factored into how we expanded. I mean, we didn't need to have a distillery that makes 220 barrels a day for our own usage. At least we didn't initially, but we knew that we could use that additional capacity to help generate capital to, you know, fund the business. And so that's what we did. Nowadays, you know, so we started off this much capacity. Well, we only need this much of it. So we got this much to make contract. And then little by little over the years, as our brand has grown, we've taken over more and more of that capacity. We still do a little bit of contract production, but we're majority of production for our own brand.
SPEAKER_02:What do you think it's 9, 90, 10 at this point or 80,
SPEAKER_03:20? Uh, it's hard to say, you know, I don't know exactly where it fluctuates also. I mean, we, we may not even be making anything right this second because it's summertime and I know we've got a shutdown plan. So you just never know.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, absolutely. Right. Yep. So
SPEAKER_00:I remember
SPEAKER_02:Joe,
SPEAKER_00:I was going to say, I remember during the tour, you're mentioning how you also started doing some barrel, uh, warehousing as well, other than contract distilling. Are you still doing that or has, has your use been, you know, with your production has taken that over?
SPEAKER_03:Well, you know, when we built our first barrel warehouse, we were also aware of other craft distilleries having the same storage issues that we were having. So we built our warehouse a little larger to accommodate some of it. And that was, you know, part of our entrepreneurial. Hey, man, we can rent out space in our barrel warehouse, make a few extra bucks. But when you produce contract whiskey, almost always those customers don't have a place for them. So if you're going to produce whiskey for someone, you better have the storage. Otherwise you're not going to be able to get the deals. So that was something that we just had to bake into there. So we had the advantage of the revenue coming from the contract production, but then also residual revenue from storage of those barrels over time. That's a big part of our business.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah,
SPEAKER_00:absolutely. So let's, let's, let's get more into your distilling process and let's, and how you talked to us about how Wilderness Trail uses a sweet mash process instead of the common sour mash process. Can you walk us through that decision and what made it a difference in the final product?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, and I can actually point out a couple pretty substantial differences in our process. You know, the sweet mash process, that's something that obviously, you know, most Kentucky bourbon producers are, sour mash producers. And that is where when you're making the mash, you're mixing the milled grain flour with hot water and back set. Back set is the liquid left over from a previous distillation. So you're going to add in, displace about 20 to 30% of that water with back set. That's how you do a sour mash. It's called sour mash because it actually tastes sour. It acidifies the mash. Sweet mash, quite simply, is we're just mixing all of our grains in with fresh water each and every time. When we started our distillery, we had an excellent opportunity to create something from scratch. And again, we're using common sense to start with. You know, we're not far off in the outer space with any of our ideas, but we wanted to create classic quality whiskey very consistently and at a very high level in terms of you know sustainability the amount of money that it costs to make it always respecting the fact we want to make the best bottle of whiskey possible so the whole sweet mash thing was partially To do a sweet mash, again, you're not acidifying the mash in the beginning, so you're more susceptible to microbial contamination. So we were showcasing, hey, we're microbiologists. We're the company that other distilleries call when they have contamination issues. So we're just going to deal with those because we know we understand that part of the process. We just exclude or... do other things to avoid the bacteria from being a problem rather than relying on acidification of the mash to do that. Because consistency is something that we look at as an, I mean, we want to make the same whiskey today as we did yesterday and the same this year as we do next year and so on and so forth. So having that consistency is very important when we look at the ingredients, the water that we're using, the grains that we're using, the yeast strain that we're using, All those things are, you're able to keep those very consistent. Well, we start getting into things like back set. Now, if I'm adding 20 to 30% of my water is back set, every batch is different. So the back set from every batch is going to be different. If I'm aiming for consistency, then I want to use fresh water each time instead of back set, you know? So that's kind of one thing that we, one of the rationale behind going into a sweet mash is Another thing is that we started off as a very small operation. We weren't operating 24-7. Part of the mentality of using a sire mash is if I'm incorporating that material left over from a previous batch that's coming off the still before it gets added into my mash, that stuff's hot and I'm trying to heat up my mash so I get to recover that heat. Not if you're running a distillery on one shift a day. So next day when we come in, that still isn't even hot. So we weren't getting that advantage. Just for many reasons, we wanted to go with a sweet mash. And the other thing is being the new guys on the block, you know, how can we differentiate ourselves? I mean, that's Sire Mash, Sire Mash, Sire Mash. We got nothing against it. We got half of my whiskey in my collection is Sire Mash. But just how do we differentiate ourselves in this situation? you know, pretty crowded market. And that's just one way that we did it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Well, thank you for that. That's, that's a great explanation. So, so you said that yeast is one of the most, at least unappreciated elements. I mean, I mean that you never hear anyone talk about yeast when you go to a distillery or you talk to other, other distillers. Like we've done like 50 or 60 episodes and I don't think hardly any of them have mentioned their yeast strains or anything like that. So can you explain how yeast and how the different strains can produce or change the flavor profile?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think first of all, going back to the observation of, you know, why don't more people talk about it? I think it's not easy. as understood as it should be. You know, the other thing, you know, people that make Coca-Cola, they don't talk about high fructose corn syrup all day either, but it's one of the ingredients. It's just like, hey, we add it and it's just, I'm sure it makes a difference of where you get it and the quality and all that. But it's just kind of one of those things where you can reliably get it and you add it and it works, you know? So there's not a lot of, I think there's also a little bit of secrecy. So people don't talk about it because people don't want you to know what yeast strain they're using. You know, Wilderness Trail is very different because we have are founded out of the beginnings of our fermentation company. And we're very open with our methodologies, with our yeast strains. And so, you know, we'll tell you what yeast strain we used. You can see it on the side of our barrel strength offerings. And if you want to get that same yeast strain, you just go on and order it. It's not that big of a deal in terms of sharing that, you know. It's a big deal in terms of how we use those strains. And we use about... we rotate between about nine different yeast strains for our whiskey production. And those are the same strains that we market to other distilleries. Now, how you use those strains is, you know, we might use a combination of yeast in one batch versus the next. So there's ways that I can take the same yeast that everybody else has and I can use it differently than they're using it. So it makes it my own. So there's different ways to rear the, am I just dumping the yeast straight out of the bag into the fermenter or am I propagating it first? Am I adding any additional nutrients that are going to fortify or boost the activity of that yeast strain? Anytime we're, you know, we're talking mainly about whiskey today, but we sell yeast to whiskey producers and just in whiskey, there's scotch, Irish whiskey, bourbons, American single malt, rye whiskeys, a lot of different options there. So we're going to use different strains based on what your goals are there. If you're making fuel ethanol, which you don't care about flavor, you want as much alcohol as possible, you'll use a strain that's more for that. If you're making beer you might have a restriction on the fermentation temperature like if i'm making a lager for example those are typically fermented between 35 and 55 degrees fahrenheit so i'm going to use a yeast strain that can withstand that low temperature so a lot of times we're choosing yeast strains based on what we're making and what type of process is used in the definition of what we're making. And then over and above that, I mean, we're not playing around trying to be creative. Here, try this different strain. We've never used this one before. We've got data on all these strains. If it's on our website, and the same with other yeast suppliers, and this is kind of where distilleries of today, you worry about other things besides the yeast and let the yeast providers worry about that part. That's kind of why a lot of people, it's out of sight, out of mind, because they just, I get that, and I don't worry about that. I know it's going to be good, and then you come up with, I mean, there's so many reasons why you would get this flavor or that flavor that's different from the yeast. I mean, there's even contaminating organisms that could make their way into your fermenter. So when people start mincing and slicing and dicing all the different flavor characteristics of whiskey and There's a lot of times, oh, that's the yeast or that's the barrel, when really it's like you're just saying that. I mean, there are definitely chemicals that are pinpointed directly to the yeast or the barrel, but a lot of times when we're just hanging around tasting things, there's a lot of just spitballing and cooler talk that goes on in this industry where people are just saying stuff without really substantiating it.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, Pat, along those lines as well, speaking of yeast and fermentation, if I remember correctly, your fermentation tanks are 2,000 to 10,000 or are they up to 20,000 gallons at the shop there?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, so we started with 400 or 500-gallon fermenters. We went to 4,000-gallon fermenters, and then now we're up to 20,000-gallon fermenters. So we've gone, experienced different sizes of fermenters, and we've been able to keep our distillate. And same with stills. We've gone from a pot still to two different column stills, and we're able to keep very consistent distillate.
SPEAKER_02:And no matter the size, are you fermenting for two days?
SPEAKER_03:No, we're actually fermenting for three days on our 18-inch column side. And that's just the way we run the distillery. So on the large side, which was historically a lot of our contract production, we were cutting those fermenters in as little as two days.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah,
SPEAKER_03:right. So it's just a different... I mean, we might lose a little bit of alcohol production in one we're cutting, but... There's yield, the number of proof gallons of alcohol you make per bushel of grain, and there's production. That's just total number of barrels I'm making in a day. So if I got hot and heavy contract production coming in and I want to make as many barrels as I possibly can, Rather than focusing on my yield, you know, the yield is going to basically get you more value per bushel of grain. The barrels, how many barrels you make is going to really where your total cash flow coming in. Your cost of goods is going to be a little affected whenever your yield is not good. But you're still that's just kind of two things that we. toggle between is alcohol yields and alcohol production so we might lose a little bit one day on yield to make up for it on a few extra barrels
SPEAKER_02:right so that
SPEAKER_03:would be kind of getting back to the two day versus three day fermentations
SPEAKER_02:yeah makes sense absolutely You guys at Wilderness Trail there have three different types of whiskeys and then maybe some barrel proofs every now and again as well, it sounds like. Why did you choose those three in particular to lead with your brand?
SPEAKER_03:Well, we started with a weeded bourbon and that was really our, you got your own distillery, you want to make stuff like you want it. So we are big fans of weeded bourbons and that's what we wanted to start with. The other thing is we knew we wanted to do as much business in Kentucky as possible. We're a Kentucky proud operation. And, you know, wheat was readily available in Kentucky. So we actually waited an extra year to produce rye whiskey or high rye bourbon because it took a year to get it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Okay. Well, let's change this up a bit. I'm talking a little bit of nerdy stuff. And let's go with a little fun question we like doing here on Bourbon with Friends. All right, Pat. So. Let's say you had to assemble a distilling dream team, but the characters or those dream team had to be from a movie or TV show, and they had to embody science, artistry, and, of course, your rock and roll background. Can you think of some characters in a TV or movie show that would do that?
SPEAKER_03:Let's see here. That's well, I think I would want the professor off Gilligan's Island because he comes up with all these great ideas. I mean, remember the episode whenever they had all the radioactive seeds and he made them eat soap to like overcome all their symptoms. I mean, that's genius, you know, so I definitely want him on there. I think MacGyver, you know, I always refer to Shane as MacGyver, but if I couldn't have Shane on my team and I got to pick somebody off a TV show, it'd probably be MacGyver just for what he can create on the TV show. Hopefully that would translate into my, my new world. And then golly, that's that's I know my list would go beyond there, but those are two that come to mind immediately. Or how about someone in the rock and roll world? Who would you
SPEAKER_00:want on your team?
SPEAKER_03:Dang, man, that would be, well, a lot of the ones I'd want on there dead. So that puts a little damper in it, but if I could bring somebody back, you know, I mean, golly, you know, I probably want David Lee Roth as my brand ambassador and, you know.
SPEAKER_00:Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you. Yeah. Like I said, we like to break up the, not the monotony, but kind of the nerdiness and, and, and the flow of the podcast.
SPEAKER_03:Well, if it's called Heavy Metal with Friends, we'd be talking for three or four hours.
SPEAKER_00:Well, that's a good thing that Martin's not on the show tonight because he is a metalhead. And we get on some lives sometimes on Instagram and they talk metal for hours. That's
SPEAKER_02:what
SPEAKER_00:we do. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Dr. Pat, you did a TEDx talk, and it was on the climate change impacting bourbon. How do you see that going down over the next few decades? I'd love to get your viewpoint on that.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, climate change, you know, that's always important because, you know, starting with the trees growing in the woods, which is where we get the barrels from, you know, some of the trees that we get barrels from are 100 years old. So the climate changes. It definitely affects how those trees mature and the quality of the wood. Same with the grains growing in the field. You know, the climate from one year to the next affects yields of grain out of the field in terms of bushels per acre. The distilleries are pretty well kind of climate controlled and all that kind of stuff, you know. You can make, given the fact we can make bourbon anywhere in the United States, and I've visited distilleries all over in almost every state, and you can make a similar distillate no matter where you're at, I believe. Because there are some things like barometric pressure and things that are going to be a little different from one place to the next. But if you get, I mean, you can ship grains from anywhere. We tend to use local grains. But given the fact you can ship grains around, conceivably, you can make similar distillate no matter where you are in the United States if you got the right climate control in your operation. But the whole... Aging in the barrel warehouse, that's a whole nother part of the process, you know, and that's where we've got evaporative loss that's occurring. I mean, you put barrels in South Texas barrels. or out in nevada and if you don't have some type of humidity control there's not going to be a drop of anything left in those barrels after two or three years so we've got to consider evaporative loss and as it gets drier and less humid we're going to lose more whiskey that concentrates the whiskey down in there it has a lot to do with flavor the cool and the hot cycles are what facilitate the expansion and contraction of the whiskey in and out of the wood that is responsible for extracting a lot of those wood chemicals. And then lastly, you have chemical reactions that are occurring over time that that will govern what esters are going to be produced and what types of chemicals are going to be produced, what complexity you're going to get in that barrel. And then lastly, if you consider the aging process or the maturing process of the wood itself, the seasoning of the wood, prior to construction of the barrel. So you cut the trees, you make the staves. The barrel producers actually will let those staves season out in the field, out in the yard there for up to two years. Our barrels are 18 to 24 month air dried. So they're seasoned for 18 to 24 months. You let that wood set outside, gets exposed to the rain, the hot, the cold, et cetera, et cetera, you let that wood sit there for 10 years and you'd have a pile of sawdust sitting there. But over the course of six months, a year, two years, you start that degradation process which is eventually going to result in disintegration of that stave. But just the beginnings of that process, you're opening up the porosity of the wood. You're also converting by the action, enzymatic action of fungal growth on those staves. You are taking very large, complicated wood structures like cellulose and hemicellulose and breaking them down into smaller particles that are more easily extractable. The barrel companies actually refer to the seasoning process as deacidification because you're volatilizing a lot of tannic acid during that process. A lot of the reason why young whiskey tastes not good is because of the it's too tannic and so by aging the staves longer before the barrels are made you can outrun a little bit or rid some of that tannic now if you're going to let the whiskey age for eight or ten years then that's why most Kentucky bourbon producers go into a three to six month air dried barrel but when we started wilderness we knew that we were going to wait till it was a bottle in bond and we would have whiskey that was eight ten twelve years old, but we wanted it to taste as good as it possibly could at that four to five year mark as well. And that's where the additional seasoning and back to the TEDx talk, that was kind of the pillars of what the talk was about.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, love it. That's great. Speaking of Cooperages, have you guys used the same Cooperage this whole time?
SPEAKER_03:Well, when we started off, again, we're only making like two barrels of whiskey a week, so we didn't really get much clout with the barrel producers. You know, so we were using whoever the heck we could get barrels from. So if you look at some of our old barrel picks, and I still see them out there on the shelves, on our barrel picks, single barrel cask strength, we actually list the Cooperage. So some of those old barrels, you'll see Canton, you'll see Segwine, you'll see Kelvin. So we were getting barrels wherever we could get them from. And that's kind of interesting about some of our early whiskeys. Recently, we've almost exclusively gone with Independent Stave Company, which is, again, a Kentucky-based company that is only 45 minutes from our distillery. So, again, just trying to use local for sustainability. We don't want to drive any further than we have to or pay any more shipping than we have to to get barrels.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, makes sense. Yeah, most definitely. So with your background in microbiology and plant pathology, How do you see science continuing to shape the future of whiskey production?
SPEAKER_03:Well, you know, it's interesting seeing more people into it. You know, whenever I got into it, I had people that I looked to. A guy named Mike Engledue was out of, I think he was out of University of Saskatchewan, and he pioneered a lot of the work with high-gravity fermentations that fuel ethanol distilleries use. There's a guy named Dennis Bayrock who works for Fibrochem. He's kind of an to the microbiology of it. Everybody always talks about Don Livermore up at the... What the heck is the name of that distillery up there? It used to be... It's up in Windsor, Canada. But he's a PhD. Everybody talks Dr. Don. You know, a lot of times when people hear me, they're like, oh, he reminds me of Dr. Don. Well, Don Livermore, he was in it whenever I started in it. So he was somebody that I looked up to. So, you know, just kind of perpetuates. And nowadays, you know, I'm in it. We've got other scientists who are in it.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:And, you know, I see that continuing to I mean, everybody's looking for the whole basis of science is the search for the truth. So, you know, you have an idea about how flavors develop in bourbon or whatever, but you really got to put that to the test. You know what? OK, I hear you saying the words out of your mouth, but where's the proof behind it? So I think, you know, and now that transparency is becoming a big deal in bourbon production, I mean, that's half the reason why we get the attention that we get is because we'll tell you we'll teach you something you know you rarely talk to the wilderness trail people and don't come away smarter than whenever you engage with us to begin with so that is our shtick you know and I think people are catching on golly that's really working for those guys so maybe if we be more scientific we can also garner some of that same attention so hopefully it's a movement
SPEAKER_00:yeah so that openness and stuff was that how you came up with the idea of your wilderness trail lab experience and how has that, and how has your guests responded to that?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, absolutely. You know, I mean, we're bourbon fans first and foremost, before we ever had a distillery, we're bourbon fanatics. We love it. We love podcasts. We like going to barrel picks. We love it, but we also know what do we love about those experiences? It's the information that you get, the no bullshit information that you get. That's not just somebody talking. You know, there's a lot of that going on in this industry. And we really saw the need for it. So we're filling a need with, you know, giving that information. But we're also given the fact that we've got will or firm solutions rather, we're just in a position to have, I mean, The other distilleries don't let you just walk into their distillery. You can't walk out of Maker's Mark and go right into Heaven Hill and start checking out their equipment. So we were in a very unique position to have gone in and studied all these distilleries, and they still let us in. It's amazing. But we've done a good job, I think, of assimilating that information teaching the distilleries that we're working with, hey, here's what we found. Here's how you can solve this problem for yourselves next time. You know, our business model is detrimental to our business because we're trying to make people smart enough to do what we do for them. But if you always do the right thing, it always works out. So that's kind of been our other philosophy. So it is a little detrimental to our business model, but, you know, it came back to us.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I thought that lab experience when we were out there was a really cool aspect of it all and getting to see the different tools that you guys use and how deep the analysis goes with each batch was really fun to see a little behind the scenes action there. So kudos to you guys for opening that up. It's really cool.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, that's worked out really well for us. We've got the lab experiences where people get to come in, put lab coats on and go out and sample from the fermenters and bring those samples back to the laboratory and actually run several of the tests that we run in a day's time. And also explaining what are we doing here? We're checking the bricks. Well, what the hell does that mean? That's the amount of sugar that's in there. Well, why do I care about how much sugar is in there? Because the amount of sugar that's in my mash is, Tells me what is my alcohol by volume going to be at the end of the fermenter. So I know at the end of fermentation, if I hit 8.7% alcohol by volume, I got every bit of alcohol that I can possibly get out of that batch versus if it was 6.5, I know I left 2% of alcohol on the table. So, that's the purpose of the lab test, and that's just another level of that transparency that we're trying to offer as a guest experience, and so it's really working out great.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, super unique. Pat, is that offered to everybody that comes through, or is that a special reservation on your website, or is it one day a week, one day a month, or how do you handle that?
SPEAKER_03:You know, that's a great dadgum question, and I wish I knew where I'll stop my head. I'm sure it's something on the website that you sign up for. That's my understanding of it. I'm more in the creative phase than the scheduling phase. That's right. I understand.
SPEAKER_02:Well, along those lines, I guess Wilderness Trail was acquired by Campari. Was it 2022, I believe? Yeah. Has that partnership for the brand, has it– How are you staying true to your original vision when a large organization like that takes over your baby? And how do you stay hands-on and driving the vision of it all still?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, so, you know, we... aren't producing any more whiskey now than we were back then. So we already had the capacity. A lot of times when you do a big deal like that, it's because you need the capital to get to that next level of production, which we already had. So we had already accomplished that. It's really more about distribution. You know, how do we get into, we were already in 44 states before we did that deal. And we were starting to get into global territories. And quite simply, we're looking for a partner that could get Get us into those spots. And also, you know, Campari is well known to have their own global distribution network. And so that's exactly what the partnership was about. And that's what we've that's what we've done together, you know, and that's that's what our goal has been.
SPEAKER_02:Love it. What? All right. Brag a little bit. How many are you in 50 states now and how many countries are where do you where is it now?
SPEAKER_03:We're in 50 states, to my knowledge. I'm pretty sure we're in all 50. And then I know we're in a handful of different countries, but right off the top. I mean, it's kind of like we're getting ready. We've already kind of got feelers out in all these different spots and we're just getting ready to feed the beast. A lot of that, you know, especially in the corporate world. It's not just Shane and I driving around in a car making board decisions in two minutes. It takes a little more time these days. Well,
SPEAKER_02:kudos to you, man. That's incredibly impressive. 13 years ago, did you ever think your whiskey was going to be sold across the world?
SPEAKER_03:No. I mean, we always had the dream. I mean, to be honest with you, we just, you know, we either knew we were going to be a successful distillery or we were going to have unlimited Christmas and birthday presents for all of our friends and family for the rest of our lives. That's right. I love it.
SPEAKER_00:All right, so we're getting close to the end here, but we have, I guess, another kind of fun question, but it also could be reflective. So if you could go back and give yourself one piece of advice when you're starting Wilderness Trail, what would it be and why?
SPEAKER_03:Well, you know, coming into having our own distillery, With our background in helping distilleries, we had a heck of a big upper hand compared to a lot of people that are doing that. And so we had a lot of confidence. When we were setting up our pot still, I remember one instance that occurred. Our pot is very interesting, is very unique because we didn't want to have a boiler to generate steam. So we wanted to heat it based on electricity. So basically it's a copper pot that sets down into a water bath and that water bath is heated with electrodes. So first thing we had to do is fill up that water jacket that's around our pot and that would get subsequently heated so we hook a hose up to that that part of our still we turn the water on my brother actually my brother mike heist he was our head distiller at that time and he hooked the hose up and got the approval of the engineer on staff which was shane hey man you know i'm gonna get ready to fill this thing up he said hey is the pressure relief device in oh yeah it's in there okay so hook the hose up turn the hose on Hour later, whatever, checked the jacket, and it didn't have any water in it. It wasn't filling up. It's like, what the hell's going on here? So we opened up the manway to the still and realized the whole bottom of our pot was crumpled up to the top. We totally pressurized that. So the pressure relief... The pressure relief device was just a screw in there. That had to be taken out and the actual pressure relief device put in. But we ruined our still before we ever ran it. So if I could go back in time and give myself one piece of advice, it would be check the pressure relief valve on the still, dude. We've seen that cause problems at other distilleries, too. But that's something that you want to look at. Pressure relief is very
SPEAKER_02:important.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Is it a Vendome still, I assume? Oh, yeah, it was a Vendome still, which is good news because Louisville and Danville aren't that far apart. So we called Rob and Mike and told them that we broke our still before we ever ran it, and they were like, what? So they came and got it on a flatbed, took it back up to Louisville, and actually fortified it a little more. That actually probably needed to happen because of how easy that occurred. So it ended up being a good thing. I bet you they could rob a mic and tell all kinds of stories, man. I'm sure you're not the first nor the last that's doing something like that. Yeah, they at one point in time, they probably gave away more firm solutions business cards than we did because they're constantly getting, hey, my firm, my mash is doing this. Like, it's got nothing to do with this. You know, let's call these guys.
SPEAKER_02:That's great, man. Good story. What's one of your favorite memories around a glass of whiskey? Is it with Shane? Is it with maybe a family member, with one of your other buddies, sitting down there by yourself when you had a life revelation? What you got?
SPEAKER_03:Man, that's a good question. I've had so many great times, you know, sitting around whiskey. I mean, you know, in general, just chilling out with friends. And, you know, I mean, there's been times of, It's really hard to say. That's a tough question. One of the most, I will say a recent time that I pulled out some damn good whiskey. I had some buddies that were in from the British Bourbon Society. Recently visited the distillery, a couple of the members who I've been communicating with for a while. Shane and I actually went to England. Gosh, whenever our whiskeys first came out, the British Bourbon Society actually did the first barrel pick ever of Wilderness Trail. So I got an interesting geography lesson over in England. Me and Shane were in London, and so we called these guys up. We're like, hey, man, we're in England. We'll just come see you guys. And they're like, oh, hell yeah, man, let's come see us. So... we finally got around to asking the question, where are you guys anyway? And they're like, Oh, we're in Manchester, which is total spectrum is. So three hour train ride, we end up with, instead of getting lynched by, uh, 200 angry British bourbon people from us canceling, we jumped on a train, went all the way up to, um, Manchester had exactly two hours to be with those guys. Had a blast. Jumped back on the same train, made it back to London just in time to get our plane out of there. But we've always kept a kinship with those guys, and a couple of them showed up to the distillery recently. And I had the fortune of coming up on some cool old whiskey. A guy called me up, a friend of mine from the University of Kentucky. He's like, do you know anybody that wants any old whiskey? I'm like, yeah, me. He's like, what do you got? I don't know. Just come look at it. And all my way over there, I'm just dreaming what it could be. And it's Old Fitzgerald, Rebel Yell, Weller from 1970s that was distilled in the 60s. So I got a bunch of bottles of this stuff, and I broke out one of the Old Fitzgeralds for my buddies at the British Bourbon Society. That's cool. And we just had a– it was such a– I mean, it was so delicious, first of all. I was just blown away. It was distilled probably around 62 and bottled in 74 and just delicious. And that's just what it's all about, you know, saving a good bottle for a time. And it meant so much to those guys and, just a great experience. That's what it's all about.
SPEAKER_02:That's really cool. I'll tell you a great, a great experience. Sorry, Joe, I got, I got to share this one experience when we had, when we were out there a month or so ago and we sit down to dinner and it's, it's Dr. Pat and Joe and I, and a couple of other guys that, that were on the, on the trip and we get the cocktail menu. And sure enough, there's, there's the, what is it? The Dr. Pat Heiss cocktail. We got the Dr. Pat Heiss cocktail with Dr. Pat with us. And I think we all started off the evening. with one of those. That was a lot of fun. That was an interesting drink, too. They don't have
SPEAKER_03:coconut in it or something.
SPEAKER_02:They did great with it. They sure did. Is that the first cocktail you've ever had named after you? I think so. Yep. To your knowledge, love it.
SPEAKER_03:Yep. I had other things named after me. It was a good cocktail.
SPEAKER_00:Good cocktail, great dinner, and great conversation. Before we start off, Dr. Pat, where can people find Wilderness Trail products and how can they get in contact with you or your other business solutions?
SPEAKER_03:Well, I mean, hopefully all you got to do is go to your local liquor store to find Wilderness Trail. We're doing as good of a job as we can to get it out there. Definitely call out the name and ask people for it if you see it or don't see it either way. And, you know, our distillery is located in Danville, Kentucky. We're on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, Heritage Trail. So, you know, anybody visiting the state, I highly encourage you to come by and visit us at the distillery. Check out our products. We're on all the major social media networks. I'm sure if you put Pat Heist's cell phone into a Google search in my cell phone number, it'll probably come up along with all my other contact information. So if anybody has heard anything that they are interested in and wants to follow up, I'm not a hard guy to get a hold of.
SPEAKER_02:And I'll reiterate the fact that if you're on the bourbon trail out there, make sure you're stopping by Wilderness Trail. It is quite the experience and something not to pass up.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, most definitely. All right, Dr. Rhett, well, thank you for your time. It's the end of our show. And remember, a bourbon with friends can change the world. Good night. Cheers, guys. Cheers. Thank you, Pat. Appreciate it, sir. Oh, yeah. Thank you, guys.
SPEAKER_01:Thanks for listening.
