The Art of Whiskey Blending: Brandon McCraney of Olde Raleigh Distillery

We've got a coffee cask finished bourbon, which that cask finished took me 6 months to refine. I left with our staff and instructions of how to make this thing. And they discovered really quickly that they need to follow every step to the T. It smelled like I was in a Starbucks. I was just like what? Pop open this vat and I mean like hits me in the face. And so I went where's where's all these beans that I asked you to where is everything? And they're like it's all in there. They put 12 and a half times what they should have in there. This episode is brought to you by The Barbook. Discover your perfect pour. Join today for free and take the guesswork out of finding spirits and cocktails you'll love. Drink smarter, explore more, and enjoy with confidence on the Barbook app on Apple and Android. All right, and welcome to the Liquor Cabinet Show. I'm Crystal. I'm Roger. Today we have a very special guest. We are going to learn about Old Raleigh. This is a highly awarded 2023 best micro-distillery in the US from the International Whiskey Competition. We're joined today by Old Raleigh's master blender, Brandon McCraney. So, welcome Brandon. Thank you for having me. Pleasure to be here. Thank you so much for being here with us. We Tell us about yourself. You've got an interesting story. That's a loaded question right there. Um well, I guess I'll just start out I am a whiskey blender by trade. With Old Raleigh, we're family owned and operated just outside of Raleigh, North Carolina, thus the name. So, I'm not very creative, I guess you want to say, but Raleigh's home. And see, we've been open about 5 and 1/2 years now, and that's just me. Luckily, cuz we own it all, I get to blend and blend my butt off every day, try and, you know, one-off bottles to, you know, I think our biggest pro- mass produced might be 1,600 bottles at this point. But, that's what we do. We just focus on quality whiskey. And uh luckily, I got a family that supports, in particular wife, my crazy shenanigans of leaving the corporate world to chase a dream of blending whiskey around the world, and luckily, it's working out pretty well for us so far. That's awesome, especially with everything going on right now within the whiskey industry. It's great to interview you. You know, you all are craft brands, and sounds like you guys are growing strong. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's been an interesting ride over the last 5 years. I mean, we opened during COVID, which was nuts in and of itself. So, when folks were during COVID talking about the good times, I have no reference point for what good times were. I just remember during COVID was, you know, we opened we we almost went bankrupt during construction. County just delayed us 8, 9 months and made us change a bunch of things with the construction. We were out of money. So, at that time, you know, you're you're you're scared to hire anybody because the bars and restaurants, they'd been open, you know, those that made it that far and weren't closed. You know, you didn't want to take from them employees, and then, you know, people weren't going to show up, and you know, when you open, folks are like, "What's the 5-year plan?" Cuz now we're 5 years well And at that time, it was, "Let's just pay the heating bill for February." You know, week to week is where we were. But, to fast forward 5 years, we've got some acclaim for some of our products. The community's been very supportive of what we're doing. And our twist on things is we just don't replicate any batch that we make. So, that gives me a free form as an artist to kind of cherry-pick barrels from around the country for bourbon, and just to come up with a nice nice mouthfeel of whiskey, and and release it to the public, and let them tell me how they feel about it. Yeah. Nice. Shy. >> You're I think you're the first master blender we've had on the show. So, tell us more about what that's like to be a master blender. So, the day in the life of blender is not too bad. It's a sample we sample a lot of whiskey. I do. And so, we've called if you go to a a big distillery, let's say in Kentucky or Tennessee, they've got their giant rick houses. Our barrel area we call that the pantry. And so, I kind of view our barrel area as I'm a chef in a kitchen and the individual barrels are like a spice rack. So, we incorporate barrels of bourbon, for example. We've got 11 different sources we use for whiskey. We've got nine different mash bills or recipes we use for the bourbon. And the bourbon's pulled from different regions of the country, also different ages. So, we've got barrels of bourbon ranging from 4 up to 22 years old. And so, as I'm packaging together, let's say a small batch release or a limited release, the day in the life would be having our production team they'll pull me samples of the individual barrels. I'm taking a master list of notes of what the profile of that barrel tastes like. And then as a blender, what you're trying to do is package together or build a more complex flavor profile by marrying multiple barrels together. So, if I can kind of paint you an image, it's it's almost like painting a bouquet of flowers. So, some of those barrels are giving you a nice base or volume of that bouquet and then you've got some barrels that are they maybe have a punch up front or linger on the finish and those give you the accents. So, you want to try to figure out how do you pick, package and layer those barrels together to give you the most complex mouthfeel and that's ultimately what my role is is figuring out, okay, what barrels we're going to use, when we're going to use them. And then beyond that, we do a lot of cask aging of a cask from all over the world. I think we have in our inventory 15 different casks that we use. And from there, the role is we don't harvest based off of time in barrel or age statement. I don't as a blender I think that's the right philosophy for harvesting whiskey because all those barrels will age and come develop complexity at different speeds. So, we always harvest our barrels based off of feel first and then flavor profile and how they package together with other barrels. That's all. Well, I'm I'm going to this first pour. This is back 17 93 fruit loop. I see. That's a running joke on the channel. I'm terrible at opening this stuff. She's got everything in order and she can open. That's nice. No need to flex. Strong like that. Yeah, strong. I don't even like the bottle. Ice. >> That's nice. So, you talk about blending. Do you all have any plans to distill or discontinue >> blending? Original plan was yes. So, if you come to O'Riley, you'll actually see distillation equipment. So, my plan was to train a staff to run the stills until our stuff was old enough to blend our own. Well, when I was with bankrupt because of the county construction process, forced me to pivot and I started networking around and I started building a very expensive network for securing barrels. Still chipping away to get the process piping done. But, if you haven't noticed in the industry it's flipped since COVID. So, COVID we couldn't make whiskey quick enough. Everybody was trapped at home celebrating the victories, drinking away the sorrows. But, and then a lot of folks jumped into this industry to take advantage of that big surge that we had. I've got friends that have spent tens of millions of dollars in those facilities. The challenge with that though with whiskey is as you've seen today, you make today what the world needs 4 or 5 years from now. Yeah. So, now we are just flooded barrels and as a business owner, that's where I had to put my strategic hat on and said, well, if if your passion and your craft is blending and you've got more access to different barrels than you've ever had and old stuff as well, would it be a better investment of our funds as we're growing as a brand and we're known as a blending operation to pivot and say we're only going to blend. So right now I can tell you I have no plans to cut our stills on. Where that may change is maybe if my kids ever decide that could be like version 2.0 would be Old Raleigh where they take the helm and that could be their baby cuz distillation and blending are two completely different crafts. One's more science-based. This is more art-based and that's kind of where my world is. Yeah. That's really cool and I I have to wonder with so much flooding of whiskey in the market right now, that's got to be looking pretty good for you on the price of a of a barrel. Yeah, not bad. Not bad at all or and so funny you know, 2 and 1/2 years ago you were lucky to find a barrel and the you just you'd have to pay you're paying a lot a lot of money. And now you're seeing you know, folks are just missing their forecasts or whatever it is or just need that cash and you see some fire sales out there. But you know, the challenge is do you have the cash to pick up all those barrels, right? Cuz you're constantly reinvesting. Um but also what you got to take note of even though the market's flooded with it is okay, now you've got the barrels. What are you going to do with those barrels to make you different in a flooded, you know, space of different brands and we've tried to be very mindful of that is okay, this is good, but what are we going to do to make this better than the 10 other products out there that may have this particular source. That's my role as a blender to try to figure that out. Well, you've done great. I get a lot of fruit notes on that. Mhm. Yeah, this is on the the lighter end of the proof end for us. So, I I do appreciate this. It's something fresh for this certain time of day. This is the lowest proof that we offer at Old Raleigh. So, it's only You have a lot of different blends. You also do some Hazmats, right? Yeah. Yeah, we have a I released three today that we've got a whiskey club, like a bottle club, that you can sign up for. We ship to members all over the country. Except Oklahoma. Yeah. Is it not in Oklahoma? Not in Oklahoma. Oh. I checked. All right. That's not good. Sorry about that. Yeah, these state laws, ironically, we can't ship in our own state, either, North Carolina. Perfect. >> Brad makes sense. Yeah, totally. So, we actually ship all our stuff up to DC. DC's laws says they can ship to pretty much anybody, and that's how you get around that stuff. But But yeah, Hazmat, we release one per year. This last one we released 2 months ago was a 25-year-old Hazmat whiskey aged in Palo Cortado sherry cask for 18 months. So, to my knowledge, that's the second oldest cask-aged whiskey released by any brand. But yeah, it was like it was it was solid. Yeah, year and a half in barrel that sherry, like Hazmat has a lot of heat on it. Mhm. The sherry after we released one portion of that release at 6 months, and then the other portion was at a year and a half. That extra time in the barrel, all that sherry just added like it was like a painted picture, but add something with like three shades of red. Just solid deep berries, deep baked cherries. It was just Sorry, I can go on and on. I It just >> actually >> actually as you're talking, I'm like, is that still available so that I can get some of it? >> You got to go to North Carolina. That's fine. I I just I just need to get a hold of a bottle. I hate hearing these stories and they're like, "Oh, yeah, so that was like 2 years ago and unfortunately it's not available." I just want to know if it's available. It is available. I can Okay. Okay. >> show you that. We emptied that cask I think 3 weeks ago cuz there are only a few bottles left. We can catch up later. How about that? Let's do that. We do need to catch up. Yes, we do. So, let's go to batch honey batch 10. This is 100 proof. I love a good honey finish. So, here it is. >> Yes. Honey's gone. That's nice. I like >> I never meant to make this more than once. I hear honey's messy. Yeah. It's Well, and our honey So, our beekeeper The only reason I got into it was cuz I got interested in beekeeping. I met a beekeeper at a farmers market. He He brings in these 5-gallon buckets of honey directly from the hive. So, it's not like that clean polished stuff you'd see at the super supermarket. Nice and gritty and we'll take those 5-gallon buckets, dump them into an empty bourbon barrel that we we just dumped out our batch We just tried batch 17 there. So, once we dump those barrels, we'll bring in honey, roll the barrels around for a month. Honey will pull out all the residual bourbon out of the barrel. And then we harvest the honey. It's a bourbon barrel-aged honey the beekeeper sells. And then we put bourbon back into that barrel and let it sit for some time and the cool part about it is whatever variety of honey that we're using will start going impart itself on the whiskey. So, what you're trying here it is batch 10. So, we use a cotton variety of honey. We harvested last November as part of this particular batch here. I really appreciate this. Most of the honeyed whiskeys we've had is just too sweet. This is not that. It lets the whiskey shine, but you know you're getting something special. So, I like >> some nuttiness out of this. Sweet, I I get that as well. So it's like you want the bourbon to be the star and the honey to be like the supporting actress. That's what's happening. Mhm. Oh I like it. Yeah we went out to Dad's Hat last summer. They have a honey bourbon. And that was delicious too. Honey is just so viscous. I really love that but I think they said that was like their one time they're like buy this now. Yeah cuz this is very messy for them so. Yeah it's it's not clean and actually if you can let you compare the two. I don't know if you can see it online here. There's your small batch. There's the honey. See how much like this cloudier it is? >> Yeah yeah. So we don't filter it over Raleigh. I do them I catch a great to catch the char flakes when we dump barrels. But with that honey I found the comment we got back from folks is hey it's to your point not sweet like the other brands. The honey isn't fresh honey true honey that's not pasteurized isn't sweet. It should pick up on the floral or fruit notes or whatever the bees are pollinating. So when I went through a filtration cycle the first time we did it it basically stripped what made this particular product stand out from the others. So what we're sacrificing there is it's not as polished but you get more of a heavier whiskey because you're getting that residual honey still hanging on to the whiskey. relative to our other small batch we had. We're going to have to experiment. We're actually going to start beekeeping in a couple of weeks. I'll tell you what it's a slippery slope. The gentleman or the the family that started who I partner with they started with one they won a raffle. In fact we're like half a dozen years later they got 70 hives now around the state. Wow we're going to start with two in case we kill one. Crossing our fingers so we can make it through this. We're going to have some help, so we're good. It's pretty fascinating to be keeping is for sure. Yeah, definitely. >> This is a delicious pour. I really like this one. Man. Yeah, this is a step up. And it's 100 proof. You talk a lot about your community and how they supported you, but you also do a lot of community collaborations as well. What is What have been some of your most memorable collaboration? Like product collaborations or Okay. Yeah, we've had a few. The honey cast finished bourbon was our first crack at what we did. That went over very, very well. I think after we released it once, so we did another release to to fill us some store orders. And then a year later the store the state of North Carolina said, "This needs to be a statewide product." I went, "Okay, that's a good problem to have." The following year we did the same thing with a coffee roaster. So, same process we use with the coffee beans. And they'll put the master roaster will pull in barrel beans in the barrel, let them sit for a few months, harvest those, and then we put bourbon back into the barrels of coffee cast finished bourbon. That was been a a big hit for us. And then I partner also with I was in went to undergrad at NC State University in Raleigh. And so we do a collaboration with their NIL to actually do a It's a barrel proof Savage Rye whiskey that portion of the proceeds go back to them as well. That's really nice. That's really cool. Love to collaborate. That's what it's about. That's one of the things we love about this industry is everyone's open. I haven't run into any gatekeeping. And so it's been really cool to just meet everybody and everybody be so open like a lot of people be like, "Oh, your podcast isn't that big." But no, everybody's like, "No, come on. Yeah, I'll happy to be on. Let Let's do this." And so that's been really cool. It is a really fun industry. I I you got the exception of the rule every now and then, but you know, those that are really doing the work, they know the grind and the struggle and and especially if you're craft growing against going against the big brands and the distributors, you know, that's one thing I really love about when we come together at festivals or trade shows, you know, generally we're we're working our tails off, but when the festival shut down, generally all the makers and employees from other brands, we're going to get together, you know, we hey, try a little bit of this. This is a new thing I got. What do you think of this one? And those are the good times. Those are the good times that make some really good memories in this industry. No, I I definitely agree. We we've had some some pretty special moments. >> Oh, yeah. Lots of them. We love our tribe. Yes. They welcome to see him like my cub. Like come here. Let's try. This is awesome. Okay, so we've got we've got one more. We've got the barrel proof batch three, 117 proof. I hope you can handle it. Mhm. I'm so ready. I was about to start pouring, but I'll wait. I You get that glass. Oh, shoot. Wrong glass. >> Yeah, wrong glass. Yeah, we got to do it the right way. Yeah, yeah, it's usually me. I should have cut in front of you. I got Admittedly, this is my nightly drinker right here. Yeah, this this is leaning more towards the richer brown sugars and toffee. It's rich. Yeah, this is nice little conversation with you on the exhale. Yes, it does. Have another. I like that. I love it. Great mouth feel, smooth feel. Yeah, this one. Mhm. So, we just started a brand. And our biggest hurdle right now is distribution. How have you been able to overcome that? Distribution's a challenge. It I In North Carolina, you can actually self-distribute your products. And so, I did that. I built up a book of business to the point where I was holding too many hats and I went, "Okay, you hear about the good and the bad of the distributors, but I either need to hire a sales team or try to entrust a distributor to to help you out. So, it's the challenge of the distributor is they have 50 girlfriends. Right. And you want to be the first. Yeah. Also, generally, some of those other girlfriends are the billion-dollar brands, and they're always going to be the first conversation. And that's the reality. It's It's tough. So, but I have had success in our state. I did get support from a distributor to get me into Virginia. And that they got us in 100 stores right out the gates. Mhm. Relationship was was was good. I guess there's You know, you you're going to have some frustrations, right? We We have an online platform, too, that we distribute, and that's been good. I found you kind of get out of that what you put into it in terms of online marketing and all that. But, yeah, distribution, tough game. It really is. Yeah. It It It hurts my heart, cuz what I feel distribution should be, it should be a partnership. They're helping us market. They're getting us into the stores, but what I'm finding is, "Okay, so how do you want to activate? Or what is your plan for that? Or okay, what stores do you want to be in?" I'm like, "You got 500 accounts. You tell me. You have these relationships." And so, it's been interesting. It's like, "So, I got to do the work and pay you to drop it off." is what it It's starting to feel like. Mhm. There's a lot of that. There's You know, you give them goals, commissions, you know, commission structures, and you'd like to think that if they're in sales, that's what their motivation's going to be, trying to hit those numbers. Now, I had a conversation with our distributor probably two or three weeks ago where I was just picking their brains on you know what am I not seeing here what can I do to to really get your team on board. You know he said one thing that doesn't cost any money. He said get to know our sales reps. You know if they like you they know your store and you're spending some time with them they're going to be more inclined to want to help you out and and think about you be top of mind when they're in those stores because you'll have a relationship. And so you know that's one thing admittedly I've been spread so thin that I I probably could do a better job on. I'm more of a extreme ownership type mentality. It's anything I can take ownership of in terms of things not going well that I'm in control and I can try to figure out of the situation or change the situation. So maybe offer that to you would be that doesn't cost a thing but time right? Yeah. >> Right. Right. No I like that. That Yeah. >> That makes trips. Yeah. The trips are going to be key. Yeah. No that's great. So what's next for Old Raleigh? What what are you what are you cooking up in the back? Ooh. Well we just released our first toasted French oak toasted finished bourbon. The hottest thing on our radar will be on the 25th. We released Old Stogie it's our fourth installment. It's a bourbon design it's a it's a cigar bourbon. So it's bourbon finished in Armagnac and tawny port casks. That's the one that Yeah. Yeah. That that that that one to pin that last one and then this one I need both of those. We'll talk after. Yeah. That's our most acclaimed product. We won best micro distillery in the US which the funny part about that we didn't know that was an award you could win. It was I submitted some bottles to an international competition they give me some feedback as a blender just a report card how I'm doing. There there were a lot of blenders from Scotland at this competition. And I just wanted to how am I doing against the likes of some of them? And that product in particular, the Old Scout swept every category it was in and we won that, you know, great award, but that really put us on the map from a I guess a global stage. So, when this product comes out, Old Scout, there's a there's always a lot of visibility on that and I think this one might be our best. It's it's got these delicious baked raisin milk dark chocolate notes just all over jumping all over it and we're probably going to release it higher proof than we've done in the past just because the cask finish is shining through against the bourbon at a higher proof, which is a great thing. So, with that being a cigar blend, what was that process to to make sure it was going to be paired perfectly with cigars? Well, at first I started with a lot of cigar blends you'll see with well, initially you talk about cognac. It's cognac, folks, cognac with a compliment of a cigar. Now, I thought, well, let's let's work on different fortified wines that that may be off the beaten path. So, for me, Armagnac, big fan of it. And then, tawny port, I just thought balanced it out really well. And so, we work with a barrel broker to import those casks from France and Portugal. With it, I selected some bourbon that had some nice I thought notes that would complement those raisin baked fruit notes that would help stand up against the cigar. And then from there it was just the the timing of the casks. You know, we we cask age quite a bit longer, I think, than a lot of brands out there for our cask finish stuff, certainly the bigger brands. But, we do that for a reason. The Armagnac in particular, at 8 months, it start it picked up the notes of the Armagnac, but right around that 8-month mark, it just like this cask finish just unfolded like a flower and it just developed a a more complexity to it. And I said, "How long can we let this thing run?" We got to I think the 13th, 14th month and I went, "Yeah, this is this is Let's this is the thing." >> And Armagnac is the unsung hero to me in the brandy space. So, I'm glad you are going that route. We love those. So, Just We just finally brought in some more. So, we only release about 1,000 bottles a year of that product. Cuz I've been unable to unable to find some high-quality Armagnac casks up until 2 months ago. So, we're going to add two more casks, which might put us at It'll be 1,800 bottles maybe a year that we might get to on this product. Not very big. We're still like a rounding error for big brands, but we're kind of I don't want to just flood the market with a watered-down product. So, we're going to take our time with scaling it up. No, that's that's nice. >> Right. In addition to doing spirit reviews, we also do spirit education. So, we like to tell people, "Don't stop at Cognac. Like, keep going." Yeah. We talk about designation of origins and things. And so, we've done a couple of Armagnacs Mhm. on on the podcast. Yeah. I was amazed. I went to Wine Paris in February potentially looking to export in Europe. I was amazed at how many Armagnac vineyards there are. Like, there were had to be 20, 30. I had no idea. Cuz all you see like in North Carolina, you might be able to find maybe two. I had no idea how many Armagnac estates there were. They don't export to the US a lot of those. They keep the good stuff for themselves. Yeah, well, I think our market is very tough to get into. That was the takeaway I got from a lot of those, the winemakers and the the fortified wine folks. So, stay tuned. There might be a collaboration with us potentially with a vineyard making Armagnac in France, also family-owned. That's awesome. Have you thought about Calvados? Where is the Calvados? Mhm. Calvados? Yeah. Yeah. That was the last thing I tried at Wine Paris, actually. Somebody said, "You need to head over there and meet with this guy." Hey. I think it could work. I believe a couple brands have released it. Personally, if I'm going to if I'm going to venture with that cask, I think it's good, but I'd probably want to do a two or three cask finish to add more complexity with with some other cask to go with it. That's just me personally. But I we don't have currently any of that aging that cask finish aging at O'Riley at this time. Okay. So, what do you do when there's a batch that just doesn't turn out quite right? Sometimes we celebrate it, to be honest with you. I get that question every weekend when we're giving tours, "Does Brandy ever have something not turn out like you'd hope?" And the answer is yeah, one time we had a disaster happen that turned into a celebration. I'm I'm teaching our staff how to blend, but it's not something that you can just learn overnight in a manual. And we we've got a coffee cask finish bourbon, which that cask finish took me 6 months to refine how to make it because coffee beans impart such a powerful flavor profile over bourbon. Mhm. Brandy's overpower. Anyways, I left going to go out of town. I left with our staff and instructions of how to make this thing. And they discovered really quickly that they need to follow every step to the T. They I came back 2 days later and one of the production workers said, "Hey, sir, it's ready." And I went, "Hey, you haven't been here working here long enough to tell me anything, but why would you tell me that after like 2 days?" And he says, "We can smell it from like across the room." And I went, "You can smell coffee from across the room." And they were like, "Yes, sir." I went, "What did you do?" I was like, "Show me what happened." So, we went back to the production area. Right when I rolled back there, it smelled like I was in a Starbucks. I was just like, "What?" Pop open this vat, and I mean, like hits me in the face. And so, I went, "Where's Where's all these beans that I asked you to Where is everything?" And they're like, "It's all in there." I went, "You dumped all of them in there?" And he went, "Yeah. Yes, sir." And I went, "Did you not read right here?" They put 12 and 1/2 times what they should have in there. And so, I'm doing the math to try to figure out how to fix this, to thin it out to where it should should be. And I'm The math on it was $18,000 worth of bourbon. And I'm doing the Yeah, that. And I'm like, And he's like, "This is all we're going to sell." I'm like, "What?" And you ever had like I don't know if you have kids at home. I've got three. And they you ever had like they're getting in trouble and like you're mad, so they're trying to act like they're cleaning up, but they're not cleaning up, they're just kind of feeling you out. duction team was doing. They were like acting like they were sweeping, but they didn't need to sweep anything. They're trying to figure out what my response is going to be. Like were they, you know, getting let go or whatever. Cuz once I 18,000, they were like, Anyways, I'm just thinking about it. And I went, "You know what? I'm just going to tell this story." I was like, "This is a bad day for Brandon." I went to the bar. I set this thing down, and they And some customers said, "Well, what's that?" "This is the coffee bomb." And I told the story what happened. And somebody said, "Well, can I try it?" I went, "Sure, why not?" You ain't going to be able to do anything else with it. Pour him one. I pour. Lo and behold, he really liked it. Next And then turned into two, turned into three people. They're like, "We like this better than the regular product." And I went, "What?" They're like, "Well, I got plenty of lemonade. Let's go." They said, "Can we Yeah. They said, "Do you They said, to we buy a bottle of it. And was like, "You want to buy a bottle of this?" Said, "Yes." So, we bottled it up, wanted to bottle all of it up. It was a 61 bottles. Sold out in 2 weeks cuz word of mouth went, "Hey, you got to try this coffee bombs. They're never going to hit the stores. It's a total screw up. Blah, blah, blah." And then scarcity hit. Yeah, that's exactly what happened. It's a one-off. You're like, "I'm definitely not doing it again." They were too expensive. Yeah, once it sold out our production team was like, "Who's the master blender now?" And I was like, "Y'all better shut the" Get out. Get out of my sight. How long was it before you let them try to blend again? Here's the crazy part. Remember that little cult following of that rare stuff? Every year now, I've been asked to make another coffee bomb for and so what you we do we've done it twice now. A 100 bottle release and actually I let empower my production team. That's cool. Yes, but had you told me again in 2019 that was going to be a thing? It's We're just rolling with the punches at at Old Rascals. I I like that cuz that that would hurt a lot of people to come to recover from that is big. That's that's really awesome. You're like, "You know what? I'm going to present it anyway." And just be We're not perfect, right? And what I find is what's just as important for people is the story. Right? >> Yeah. And so, yeah. Mistakes happen even mass you know, master blenders or masters like yeah, we all make mistakes, right? That's that's how you master a craft by putting in the reps. You know, if I don't try to put on this fake facade like we're perfect all the time. We're sometimes we're going to miss the mark, but it's how you learn from that and what you do to push the brand forward after that. That's really awesome story. So, what is your advice to someone that wants to become a master blender. Goodness. I'd say you need to take a methodical approach to develop to developing a pallet. And a methodical approach isn't mindlessly cracking open a bottle of whiskey every day while you're eating food and just getting intoxicated. I I I did this many years ago was if I truly want to be a blender, I need to have a really good pallet. I need to have a really good pallet, I need to be mindful about what it is I'm tasting in my mouth and dissecting the whiskey. And so I'd say you got to start there. If you don't have a good pallet and but Yeah, that's not going to work. >> You're not as a blender, what do you what do you you're useless, basically. Cuz you got to be able to figure out here's one barrel and this is how it hits. How do you layer another barrel on top of that to get even more of a mouth feel? And the only way to do that is by putting in the reps. But also you got to be mindful about what you're doing and be disciplined about it. So, when we do blending workshops then we'll bring in customers and I'm like, look, I can create a blend with different cast finishes with about less than half an ounce. Like, you bring in first-timers and they're just loading up. You know, they're like three or four ounces and they got and the first time they're not going to get it right. So, by the time they get through like their fourth or fifth iteration their pallet's just gone and I'm like, y'all are nuts. I'm like, you only the purpose of creating or blending is sample and build, right? It's not to get intoxicated. You need just enough to figure out how to develop that and make it more complex. Yep. That's really cool. Well, I don't I don't I know he was using your favorite word. Being mindful. >> Mindful. We preach that often here on this channel when it when it comes to this type of stuff and not overindulging and you You we we kind of approach just our journey that in a similar fashion. Not not all the way down to the pipe end cuz I know you guys are down to the meals with it, but we're we want to be very intentional and and mindful in how we approach this. And yeah, that is probably the best advice you can give somebody who's going to be a blender because they're the ones doing the heavy lifting for the end product that folks are going to really get. So, yeah. Yeah, and I'd say best time before your palate is generally late morning on a fast. I don't know if anybody's talked about this before, but No. Oh, yeah. We'd love to hear this. Okay, so you're So, just think about it from a logical perspective. You're you're sleeping, so your body's been fasted. All right. And then in the morning, I don't have any breakfast, no coffee. So, if I'm trying a whiskey late morning, I mean, just think of your body is trying to Whatever you put in this your mouth is trying to satisfy and feed itself. So, anything that you're trying in the morning from a spirit, your tongue's going to light up just like a billboard. That's the best time to really dissect a whisk. Should I do it in the morning? I'm sorry? >> saying, what if you just have a shot of whiskey before work or a shot of tequila? I'd be on it. The first thing. Hey, you know, you're building your blending palate, I guess, if you want to get it Like, what are you going to do? I'm I'm working on my blending palate. >> That's right. >> Don't judge me. So, as a blender, that's typically when I'll do that. You know, if you do it in the evening, you've already had two or three meals out of the day. Well, you've got whatever you were eating in your lunch still stuck between your teeth and the chance is going to impact whatever you're trying to sample and dissecting, for sure. Got you. And then you might need a chouch afterwards, you know. Yeah. No, we And what we mean when we say the liquor connoisseur is we actually have a shirt with this. It's one who experiences alcohol different. So, we're looking for those positive experiences with alcohol, getting together with friends. Everything has notes. When you think about music, you know, you remember where you were when you first heard the song. That's what we want people to feel about alcohol. Like, "Oh man, remember when we were at this bar? And we had Old Reliable." And With good stories, not the bad ones. We've aged out of the bad ones. We We try to say that. We're like, "Oh, I've got stories." I'm like, "No, no, no. The ones you want to remember, the good ones." It's all about stories. Create memories, bringing people together, bringing community together. I just talked to somebody recently. It was I don't I don't talk politics. Because I think as a whiskey maker, I'm the one of the few that can bring people together. Mhm. We don't need any polarity. We can have Here's our bond. Let's start with whiskey. Right. That's right. And then from there, how about we talk about your family? Yeah. Let's Let's go from there. But I think whiskey in particular cuz that's all I make. I'm a one-trick pony, you know, can bring people together. I love that about it. No, that That's the truth. That's what I love it. You know, going places and people are like, "Oh, what's that in your glass?" Oh, it's just a little neat pour of whiskey or a neat pour of this. Every now and then I'm extreme, but you know, it starts a conversation. So, we're both introverts. So, alcohol has been a good way for us to extrovert, to meet new people and have conversation. Yeah, start to loosening up lips a little bit, right? Yeah. That's true. Well, we appreciate you, Brandon, for being here. As we talk about mindfulness, one of the things we love to say is drink to remember, not to forget. Word. It's a great saying. Thank you. So, we appreciate you coming here and we'll do a toast. >> Absolutely. All right. Cheers. Yeah. >> Cheers. Thank you, man.