Boulder Spirits: “I’m from Scotland. I’m going to make whiskey.” Crafting American Single Malt Whiskey with Ryan Negley & Alistair Brogan

Cory Comer 0:00
Music.

This is whiskey wanderlust,

Ryan Hall 0:07
and we’re on an expedition to discover how Colorado is elevating craft spirits from grain to glass.

Cory Comer 0:14
We bring whiskey explorers like you an inside look at the distilled stories, colorful characters and rich flavors that make Colorado a true whiskey frontier. So pour yourself a DRAM and join us on an unforgettable journey.

Ryan Hall 0:35
On this episode, Boulder spirits,

Cory Comer 0:39
welcome to whiskey wanderlust, the Colorado spirits act position. We’re your hosts. I’m Cory.

Ryan Hall 0:44
I’m Ryan,

Cory Comer 0:44
and welcome. Today is a very exciting, very exciting today for us. This is our first episode that we are releasing, and we’re excited to share with you guys what’s going on with the podcast and what we’re doing, and also talk about our first interview we’ve conducted. So Ryan, why don’t you share with us what what our viewers should be able to expect in future episodes?

Ryan Hall 1:07
Yeah, I’d love to. So what we are doing is focusing on the Colorado whiskey industry, that includes distillers, suppliers, people who are promoting the spirit within the state, and just trying to bring awareness to brands and awareness to the industry as a whole. And so what these conversations will be are interviews with the distillers or with the suppliers themselves. Find out a little bit about their background. We find out about how they became or how they became involved in the industry. And then we move on to a section that we like to call our angel share, and where we talk about some of the things that ways that they’re giving back to the community and their charitable efforts.

Cory Comer 1:44
I really enjoyed that particular segment because it gives us charitable giving and efforts are near and dear to our hearts, and in fact, we should share about how we met, but it’s really critical, I think, to highlight what they’re doing, because most of them are doing things, usually out of the limelight, not necessarily getting a lot of press, but they’re usually doing something significant. It’s always been fun to talk to them about what their initiatives that they’ve done.

Ryan Hall 2:09
Yeah, I agree. And like, just, just to find out some, like, the varied ways that they’re giving back. It’s a lot of, it’s ways you wouldn’t expect, getting involved in their in their, like, hyper local community. So it’s, it’s pretty cool.

Cory Comer 2:21
I mean, it’s, it’s been a ton of fun. We’ve got to know some, some really cool, unique characters in the industry. And it’s really cool to see how they’re promoting and changing, really the whiskey landscape in general, and how they’re involved in and I mean, whether it’s lobbying or obviously just making just awesome spirits and setting new standards for Colorado and challenging the big players in the space. It’s been a lot of fun. So,

Ryan Hall 2:47
Yeah, and then stick around at the end of the episode, because we do a tasting with each of the distillers on a few of the picks that they’ve selected themselves.

Cory Comer 2:54
Yes. And also, don’t forget, we are attaching to every episode. We are attaching a bonus content onto YouTube, and we’ll be hosting tours of their facilities to be able to see those behind the scenes, some of the things that they do that makes their spirit unique, or even their process unique. So be sure to look at that up on YouTube as well. So.

Yep, so great. So who are we talking to in this episode.

All very excited about this particular episode. This particular episode has been aging in the barrel for a year. It was almost, literally, almost a year exactly, ago that we recorded this episode. We had an opportunity to go up to vapor distillery in Boulder and interview Alistair Brogan and Ryan Negley. They’re at Boulder spirits and had just a fantastic conversation with them, their their formation, or their their role in forming the American single malt category in America, which is a an exciting thing, which we’re still waiting on the decision, but it should be so one of those things, any day now, right? But, yeah, just like every good government project, right?

Ryan Hall 4:00
Yeah, it was any day now, when back to the year ago, when we did the interviews correct?

Cory Comer 4:04
It was and still waiting on that. But obviously Alastair, originally from Scotland, very fascinating character, came to the estates and is doing his his best to create a new category with the traditional malt grains, which is not necssarily something that America has been accustomed to for so long. So that’s super cool. What what particularly stood out? Stood out to you in the interview?

Ryan Hall 4:31
Well, I gotta say, when we first started doing the podcast, I was, I was very new to whiskey, and so I knew very little, and so that’s probably gonna come out in the episode. But since then, I’ve learned a lot. And through talking to these distillers, I’ve really gained a lot of knowledge about the process, about the grains and everything. And I think one of the things that stood out to me was just how involved they are in that effort to bring the American Single Malt as an official category to establish the the rules behind its production. And so that was that was really interesting to me. And so.

Cory Comer 5:07
Yeah, and, and you guys all have an opportunity here, kind of some more of the science, kind of nerdy science behind this, the distilling here in Colorado, they were very scientific when they went to build their still, and the particular challenges that they have here in a dry climate, with the wide temperature swings, and all the kinds of things they did to make sure they are producing a quality spirit. And obviously they’ve won a lot of awards. They’re getting a lot of recognition on the national scene. So, and I mean, they make great product, and we had an opportunity to try this particular whiskey, which I’ll save the title for that one when you get to the tasting. But we really enjoyed our particular tasting in this episode.

Ryan Hall 5:49
This is one of my favorites from from last year, and so it’s, it’s pretty good stuff, yep.

Cory Comer 5:53
So with that, enjoy the show.

Ryan Hall 5:59
Alistair Brogan, Ryan Negley, Boulder spirits, thank you guys for being on the show. Really appreciate you taking

Ryan Negley 6:05
Happy to be here. Thanks for coming up. Pleasure.

Cory Comer 6:06
So Alistair, let’s start with you. Judging from your Cal, your accent, you’re from California, is that correct?

Alistair Brogan 6:11
South Texas

Ryan Hall 6:14
Yeah, southern. I pinned it.

Cory Comer 6:15
So tell us, how did you get here, what was it? What was your background, and how did you get here? And why Boulder Spirits?

Alistair Brogan 6:21
From my accent. Yeah, I’m from from Scotland. I’m from Glasgow in Scotland. This is my third career. I was in the military for 10 years back in Scotland, in the UK. Then was running a business for 15 years, and then I met my wife, who was from Pennsylvania, and we lived in Scotland for about six or seven years, and then circumstances changed, and we made a decision one day to move to the US. And so we’ve now been here for 12 years, and we brought our one at the time, one year old and three year old, Scottish born kids over, but they’re now fully Americanized. So, yeah, that’s been 12 years now. I’ve been to in the US.

Cory Comer 7:05
Okay. So how did you end up in Denver and Boulder then, like, what was, what led you guys here?

Alistair Brogan 7:10
Honestly, looked at a map.

Ryan Negley 7:13
I love this story.

Alistair Brogan 7:14
Looked at a map. I’d been to the US maybe 2025, times before. Looked at a map. Of us went too cold, too hot, too crowded on the West Coast, hurricanes, tornados, New York, Boston and we came over to Colorado. Did a bit of research, because I’ve been skiing here many, many times before, did a bit of research. Boulder, rented house for a month. By the time we left, we bought a house, moved back to the UK for six months, I was getting my visa, no problems if you’re married to an American. And within seven months of returning, I was back here, starting to become a US resident.

Ryan Hall 7:56
How did you and your wife meet? Did you meet here in the States or in Scotland?

Alistair Brogan 8:00
I was in Tampa, met her in a restaurant, love at first sight, and within six months, she was living in Scotland with me. The way to stay in Scotland is to do education. So she had two years to do a degree. And within after two years, just before, two years before she was deported, I married her.

Ryan Hall 8:25
Okay. Were you, were you in tempo for was it on vacation?

Alistair Brogan 8:29
Meeting my family actually, just have a family holiday with my parents, my brother, my sister from Australia. We all were meeting, and then I met, met my wife. So, yeah.

Cory Comer 8:39
Wow, big international family sounds like.

Alistair Brogan 8:41
Yeah, well, as soon as we all, we all moved out of Scotland as soon as we were able to. So one moved to Australia, one moved to London, and I stayed behind until I moved so I was in a family business for 15 years until it was sold in 2009 and then I thought, What do I want to do? I didn’t own compete for three years. And I thought, well, go to the US. And what I was going to do was buy a still, come to the US, and as almost as a hobby, make American single malt whiskey. And it was going to be a hobby, 5050, but literally, as soon as it started, boom, it was 100%

Cory Comer 9:18
So what did you do in the family business?

Alistair Brogan 9:21
Oil and gas.

Cory Comer 9:22
Oil and gas?

Alistair Brogan 9:22
So distribution, fuel cards, supplying fleets in the UK. And it was purchased by an Irish company. And literally, you know, once it was sold, I never looked back. You know, you get absorbed in whatever you’re doing, the work you’re doing at the time. I love the military. That was fantastic, but wanted to move on. The family business was great. But, you know, once I started distilling, things completely changed.

Cory Comer 9:53
So oil and gas there’s distillation there, but I don’t think that’s where your passion for distillation came from. So tell us, like, what. Like, how what led to that, that passion?

Alistair Brogan 10:01
I think, I think being brought up in Scotland, you know, scotch whiskey is such a huge part of Scotland. You know, 1.5 billion bottles are exported from Scotland. And we got 141 distilleries the size of of well, single whiskey distilleries the size of Colorado. So you were brought up with it. And it was something I wanted to do. I want you to be to be honest. I want you to be a bit more creative and see how I would do with that. And you know, I had several friends who were masters distillers in Scotland. So the fundamentals, I didn’t have a background in it, but the fundamentals are the same. Once you get those fundamentals, what we believe here is that in Colorado, you’re going to then have other things that are going to influence your whiskey, and it going to make it very, very unique and very high quality. And that is, first of all, the still that I brought in. Secondly, the altitude here and the weather makes such a significant difference in the whiskey, and then also the water as well. So those factors make it very distinctively Boulder, Colorado and American.

Ryan, you’ve got, speaking of Colorado, right? You’ve got, you’ve been here a long time,

Ryan Negley 11:00
Yeah, man

Cory Comer 11:01
You’ve been a little bit of a journeyman through some different stops along the way getting here. Tell sure about your background and how you how you landed here.

Ryan Negley 11:18
I suppose it’s easier to work backwards. He was launching single malt whiskey. I was already in the whiskey world a little bit. Had the chance to work with two other Colorado distilleries prior to this, but got my way into that through the drink making world. Everybody was launching a distillery, or their products were coming to fruition, they needed to get, you know, you had to have somebody in the Denver market to go kind of be your thing. And the two distilleries I’ve worked for, you know, were mountain distilleries. And so I was the mountain, excuse me, the city connection for those distilleries and and able to represent those, those brands, you know, to the majority of the people, without having to, you know, be based in those respective towns. But you get recognized in that regard by, you know, being somebody in a in that time, the cocktail scene and the bar I ran was pretty recognized for its whiskey selection, even though it was a kind of off the beaten path in several ways, kind of bar, but it was, and of course, that was kind of an impetus working at this bar to start the Denver whiskey club. The Denver whiskey club led me to meet, really everybody in the national scene, everybody that came through Denver kind of came through the Denver whiskey club. So I got to meet a lot of people there.

Cory Comer 12:44
So, tell us about the origin, like, what, what precipitated the whiskey club, and what was it for?

Ryan Negley 12:50
Oh, I mean, you know, our tagline is, you know, we’re passionate about education and learning about whiskey. And was then, and still am, but it was started from me and my buddy Moose, who had worked at Peach Street at the time. And to be honest, we needed education about how the industry worked. And so I had the ends with the with the distribution angle from working in a bar, and said, hey, you’ve got anybody coming in town, because I know you’re doing staff trainings in the afternoon. What are they doing that night? Can we get a group of people together to see how they give their presentations and learn about what they’re doing and and that was the start of it. And so for, you know, 100 or so, you know, 150 meetings later, and we’ve met everybody in the country that’s ever traveled to talk about whiskey, we’ve learned a lot. It was absolutely a chance for us to see what, what national brands were doing, and how can, how can we utilize that and apply that at a regional scale.

Cory Comer 13:53
Very cool. But then from there, it evolved into,

Ryan Negley 13:57
Yeah, I mean, Denver whiskey club get, you know, you start getting noticed from from brands, and especially all the local folks start coming to these, these club meetings. And of course, some of the local brands are also presenting at the club meetings. And you just kind of get to be known. And as it goes on, I was getting deeper in just the knowledge and the rich history of of whiskey and and I could, I can talk just about any, any portion of the last few 400 years of whiskey and whiskey production, whiskey history. And so brands want that, you know, brands want to be able to have somebody that is not just able to sell things, but can actually sell things with a passion and sell things with a breadth of knowledge that whiskey really, really deserves.

Ryan Hall 14:45
Yeah, and so at the time when you’re with, your involvement with the Denver whiskey club, how, how big was the membership, by the time…

Ryan Negley 14:51
The email list is a couple 1000 big monthly meetings were we capped around 65 people. And. You know, space of whatever room was available, right size of economics, to be honest. But yeah, it was. We’ve been less than active in the last handful of years, COVID, of course, but all of us that were leading the club, we’ve all, you know, gone on. We’re doing brand work, or we’re doing distillery work, we’re doing distillery consultation, or we own a soda company. You know, just other other avenues that have taken us away from, from the activity of the group, but the spirit lives on for sure. Well,

Ryan Hall 15:29
what? What do you believe the impact that the having this, having this community of whiskey lovers brought to Colorado, and, you know, to Denver and to Colorado, you

Ryan Negley 15:39
know, it was having a landing place for for teams that when they’re planning their national tour, of their national brand ambassadors, and saying, Oh, we stop in Denver. We’ve already got a room of 60 people waiting to see us when we get there. Yeah, you know, like being a stop on the map, that that really helped. And Denver is always, there’s always New York, Chicago, LA throw in a Miami and a Dallas too. But when people, when brand, national brands, want to experiment a little bit on a market, they come to Colorado. We’re thirsty out here. We’re a great test market to see how everything will filter out into the smaller markets. And so Denver was always one of those hot spots to stop, you know, post launch in New York and LA and Miami and Chicago, you know, you came to Denver.

Cory Comer 16:30
Was that how you met Alistair was it through the club then? Or, how did you have that?

Alistair Brogan 16:34
I don’t remember how we actually met? Yeah, I remember speaking.

Ryan Negley 16:38
I do. I actually,

Ryan Hall 16:39
oh,

Ryan Negley 16:39
I remember the first time I met you that I remember, but it was actually a Breckenridge Still on the Hill. Oh, you were, you were still, you’re kind of hanging around these guys, but I don’t think you’d committed anything to here yet. But you know, you’re going around being that affable Scotsman. Hi, I’m from Scotland. I’m going to make whiskey here, and we’re all going, all right, you’re the proper American treatment. Our

Alistair Brogan 17:09
whiskey wasn’t, hadn’t been launched by that Yeah, we were still at that stage where, before the launch, there was lots of cleaning up to do, whether it be branding, marketing, understanding, what we needed to do. So I may. After that, Ryan and I sat down, and I think there was a little bit of you interviewing me rather than me interviewing you, because you know, if you’re going to put your name on something, if you’re going to put your name in the company, you want that company. You want to know what that pathway is. And so we spoke a lot about the labeling, the bottling, the quality, the standards, before it was even launched, and then we launched it, and it was a collaboration on that launch, because I was still feeling my way. I mean, in business, you’ve got to be a jack of all trades. Sometimes you’re not that great at certain aspects. So you need that collaboration. You need that team that’s able to do those things right. So I recognize that. And I think now Ryan is just, just over five years now, he’s been, we’ve been working together, which

Ryan Negley 18:11
means we launched American single malt whiskey, yeah, five years ago, yeah, I pretty much came on with the launch of the of the brand, and then we did some retooling, and then.

Alistair Brogan 18:20
Yeah, but one of the things I think, in the community, especially in the distillers community, is that passion just it’s a rich vein of passion that goes through everybody. We’re not the only ones. There’s, there’s hundreds of us. They just love it. I think both Ryan and I are sort of focuses on not because we’re selling it. Is because we want the American single malt whiskey is where we are driven.

Ryan Negley 18:45
Yeah, I mean, I worked really hard to get into this industry, you know, and I just took a different channel than some folks. However, that’s my favorite part about the entire craft distilling industry, is that everyone’s got a background story. Everyone’s got I was in the military, and then I did this thing for 15 years, and I was at Vauxhall. Yeah, I was exactly, exactly. Nobody’s really got the same background story. And everybody, you know to speak to, what he was talking about is, you know, is strong and two thirds of a pie chart, you know, a business, but nobody’s good at all. But, you know, we have, you have to have other folks that are also have this crazy passion about whiskey, but, oh, you’re good at this stuff. Cool. I’m not good at that stuff. Let’s get together and see if we can work together, right?

Alistair Brogan 19:29
An industry such that, you know, you can literally text other distillers who, in theory, you’re competing against, and go, How do you do this? How do you do that? Do you know somebody can do that? Can you do and that’s I absolutely. I was never, I’d never experienced that before in the businesses that were were in, was in before. And this is just a real fun part of a really warm part of being in this industry.

Ryan Negley 19:51
Yeah, by a byproduct of of being in this industry is, you know, have like, 1000 new friends. Yeah, it’s crazy.

Cory Comer 19:58
So, do you think that’s. Exclusive to Colorado, or do you think that’s kind of more the the global 10 or two in the states here?

Alistair Brogan 20:05
I would say it’s unique to smaller states that have got a distillers guild. When you’re talking about the largest states where there’s more distance between the still distillers that don’t meet up through a distillers guild. We had the distillers guild here maybe a month ago, and you know, half the distillers in Colorado are here. Hey, how you doing what you’re doing? You know, how you doing this? How you doing that’s a chance to ask questions, right? And trying to all lift each other up a lot, because we’re all doing, we’re doing. Some of us are doing the same thing, but the different way. And that’s, that’s the beauty of Colorado’s distilling, and it’s similar to all the smaller states that book guilds.

Cory Comer 20:43
Interesting.

Ryan Hall 20:43
You’d spoken a little bit about the how you guys have met when you decided on coming together and creating this brand. What were some of the discussions you know about about that?

Ryan Negley 20:55
Well, I think the you know first bit was the whiskey was good, like I absolutely joined this team here because the whiskey was great. I mean, it was young then, but I saw the future of it. And what was, what was lacking was, which is, this is true of most craft distilling. You got to make the product first before you go sell it, right? And so everybody comes up with a budget of saying, cool, I can build a distillery and put down this much whiskey, and I’ll have this much time, and I’ll have spent that much money, and then I’ll have this much more money to go sell it and market it. And everybody spends all that money by the halfway through that first part of the process, has to borrow some more money to finish the first step of the process, right? And now they’ve got no money to go sell their whiskey, right? An idea,

Cory Comer 21:44
And really, that’s really the business operations problem for any entrepreneur, right?

Ryan Negley 21:48
Right, and it’s and it’s when you get to this point, and you’ve got to not just invest dollars, but you’ve got to invest in, in the in the industry itself, in the front of the house industry, right? I always compare everything to to working at bars and restaurants. There’s a back of house in the front of house, and you know, right now, we’re in the back of house, and everything outside of that front door, whether you’re talking to bartenders or whether you’re talking to a buyer, and, you know, the back of a liquor store, or you’re standing behind the table, you know, at large whiskey festivals, you know, that’s the front of house. And so Front of House was just, it wasn’t the forethought. It never really is the forethought. When you’re when you’re launching, specifically a distillery, when launching a brand, you’re thinking about it when you’re launching just the distillery and the factory and all kind of stuff. You know, that’s a secondary thought. So when we got, when I joined the team, it was, you know, let’s we got to shift focus to what, is going to attract, you know, folks to to this beautiful whiskey that we’re making here. First thing was, you know, just upgrade on the bottle and the label. And, you know, that’s more or less an easy thing to do. It’s a lot of personalities kind of coming together to say, hey, what? What is going to tell our story just on a shelf. But the rest of it is, is getting out there and building relationships in this industry and in this industry community.

Cory Comer 23:07
So, bourbon is America’s spirit, right? So they say, so why American single malt? Like, why did you choose that? And I mean, especially when you’re gonna go build a brand, right? There’s a lot of big brands out there, but they’re all doing bourbon. So why American single malt?

Alistair Brogan 23:27
Maybe bourbon is too easy. I think Europeans don’t really know about bourbon. We’ve got green whiskey. We’ve got single malt whiskey, which encompasses Scotch in most of you. Our grain whiskey is, you know, we don’t, you know, think Johnny Walker, we’ve got a lot of grain whiskey here. You’ve got four main whiskeys with the four main grains. So I naively thought I could change, educate the American people, the American single malt whiskey. But I came across. When I came across, I learned very quickly that wasn’t going to happen. So it’s an education with the like everything you know, Bourbon is an education Europe. Single malt, American Single Malt Whiskey is an education in America. So we’ve all got our preferences in food and drink, um, and it’s a slow process. It’s going to take a little longer than I thought, but people are that interest in American single malt whiskey is absolutely accelerating, and again, with the Tax and Trade Bureau standard recognition to have American single malt whiskey as an official whiskey category. At the moment, it’s under the auspices of malt whiskey,

Cory Comer 24:42
You guys had a role in that, right?

Alistair Brogan 24:45
Yes, so, mainly, Ryan is part of that commission, so he’s the one of the lead guys in that commission, and it’s been going from 2016 we’re just at the point where it’s gone through public consultation, we’re hoping it’s more of an administration sign off, rather than a legal sign off or anything like that. So we’re just hoping that that’s going to come it. We’re always hoping, yeah, it’s,

Cory Comer 25:09
this is the establishment of the official American Single Malt

Ryan Negley 25:13
Exactly, it’s essentially, you know, the American single mal whiskey commission is essentially our lobby right to the United States government and the Tax & Trade Bureau to check that box to have that box to check, right? You know, right now you can, when you scroll through and you got to do all your compliance and you say, what kind of whiskey This is in TTB, and there’s a bourbon box, and, you know, there’s a rye whiskey box, and there’s a, you know, wheat whiskey box, etc. But there’s not, no such thing as a single malt, but there’s malt with there’s malt whiskey, which we, you know, technically register our whiskey as, but there’s not a single malt category, and that’s what we want. And this goes back to the collaborative nature of of this industry. I wasn’t a part of this at the time, but yeah, back in 15 or 16, eight or nine, folks gathered around a table in Chicago, hashed out the generic rules of American single malt whiskey as a kind of an amalgamation of scotch whiskey rules and American whiskey rules. And that literally took them about 30 minutes. They were like, All right, well, what do we do now? So they sat around and drank some beers and talked about taking over the world future of American whiskey. You know, mind you, none of our whiskey was aged, yeah, only really, you know, a handful of distilleries that actually had, you know, properly aged whiskey at the time. So

Ryan Hall 26:30
So, you were, you were, they were going for the barley.

Ryan Negley 26:33
Exactly, exactly. And so this is, is incredibly important, you know, the second we get this, this category, and as far as the pipeline of it, it’s been introduced, it’s had public comment. The public comment period is closed. We’re literally waiting for the TTB just to say, Here you go. You know, like, it’s very cool. We it’s made it through. Like, everyone’s stamped, and everyone said, Yes, right? Um, hopefully that’s any day, of course. But we’ve been saying any day for a couple years now.

Cory Comer 27:00
But there’s rules and standards for bourbon and scotch, right? And some of these other spirits,

Ryan Negley 27:06
Very regulated, yeah.

Cory Comer 27:07
What, what is the standard then, for American single malt that you guys are aiming for?

Ryan Negley 27:13
you know, it doesn’t really stray that far from either of those whiskey rules. Like I said, it’s just kind of a little baby of the two. But first and foremost, it’s kind of we just break it down, American single malt whiskey. American means here, right anywhere within our United States, single everywhere around the world. That word single means one distillery, so we can’t buy, you know, one of our friends, single malt whiskeys or malt whiskeys, and bring it here and say, Oh, we’re going to make single malt that’s not single malt. Single is one distillery. Malt, meaning 100% malted barley. Perfect. You know, we’re all in handshake ingredients on that. Yeah, right now, the majority of us are in the category where it says it’s at least 51% malt, but we’re all obviously saying it’s 100% malted barley because it is. And then, of course, do you have to age it in a freshly charred brand new oak barrel? Currently, if you’re registered as malt whiskey, yes, you do. But if you’re not, if you’re registering under a different whiskey category, an outlier, and you’re aging and used oak, point at the wrong barrels, aging and used oak, then no, you’re you’re still part of the American single malt category, because that’s what we want. We want to explore new flavors. And up until now, bourbon, excuse me, straight bourbon, straight rye, straight malt, all of these categories are dominated by the new oak barrel by law, and so we’ve been kind of confided by this flavor of the brand new oak barrel and malt whiskey doesn’t in different parts of the country, can play very well in used oak. Why, why keep the this flavor spectrum, you know, limited to just the new oak. Let’s open it up to the used oak and and let’s find these new flavors. And that’s what’s a major shift away from any other American whiskey rule, but at the same time, we’re not demanding that it be cooked on a pot still like the scotch whiskey rules. You know, we don’t have an age minimum, because right now there’s folks putting whiskey in 10 gallon barrels and making pretty good whiskey out of it. So, you know, the future and the future flavors are are pretty limitless right now in American Single Malt. And as we evolve, you know, if you want to put the word straight, or if you want to put bottle and bond on it cool, just prepare, be prepared to meet those rules.

Alistair Brogan 29:27
And the rules are, the rules are wide enough to still have creativity. Sure they’re not too tight, and that’s what the exciting part is. And you know, one of the things I want me to comment is because as soon as people tend to hear my voice, they think, Oh, you’re trying to make scotch. No, we’re not trying to make scotch. It’s an American single malt whiskey. And what is really interesting is we actually distributed with our single malt whiskey in Scotland. And what was great about tasting Scottish people on American single malt whiskey is those whiskey, those people with real interest in whiskey want to experiment these tastes and flavors. And so Scotland is very used to looking to places like even Tasmania, Germany, and picking up and even winning awards for the best single malt whiskey in the world. That’s even beating Scotch whiskey. So they want to explore things? And what we’re finding in Scotland, in the UK, they’re wanting to explore American Single Malt Whiskey. And it really is incredible. I mean, I went across and I was talking to big whiskey groups, scotch whiskey groups, even with this accent, petrified. But the reception I got was, you know, this is different. This is interesting. This is fantastic. And actually, even in the US bourbons now, there are more and more bourbons that are not from Kentucky. And again, we’re distributed with our bourbon in Kentucky. And they are, again, I was quite nervous about presenting to these clubs, these bourbon these these guys who just, yeah, it’s only Kentucky bourbon or nothing. Well, no, they are not. They’re wanting to taste new flavors, all high quality, but you want to taste different things absolutely. And Colorado has got that uniqueness with climate, the water, everything. So there’s other states, by the way, they’ve got that uniqueness. So it’s opening up that whiskey library for people around the world,

Ryan Hall 31:25
So American single mall is, kind of, is kind of the next step in evolution of whiskey, it seems in America.

Ryan Negley 31:34
Yeah, you absolutely said that. Those are your words. And I will quote you on that for sure. We were out there trying to make it be so, right? We’re not trying to battle bourbon. Like, that’s not a thing, right? We’re again, like, we’re bourbon. Bourbon is the steak and rise to potatoes. And we’re trying to be, you know, a little little dessert there at the end, kind of a thing. Like, we know our place. Like, yeah, we can’t. We’re not coming in and going to change how people eat and drink, you know, like bourbon is king, and we, you know, we know that, but we love single malt whiskey, and we love what our friends across the country are doing with their single malt whiskeys. And malt is just something that I was attracted I was a bourbon nerd for so long, but every time I started trying malt whiskey and I was just, that’s just where my palate started leaning. And then you think about Scotch owning that word, single malt. Well, they don’t, because there’s 40 countries around the world that make single malt whiskey, so they made it famous. But the rest of us are making, you know, new flavors of it.

Cory Comer 32:38
So, I mean, I started out in Scotch world, a little little bit of, yeah, interesting person, right? Being an American, like coming in from the Scots side, things was a little bit

Ryan Negley 32:48
You’re a black sheep, and the whiskey world, right now.

Cory Comer 32:50
And it worked my way backwards to Bourbon. And the one thing I really appreciate about Scotch is the is the is the richness and stuff that they it’s part of by the use barrels, the port and cherry barrels, stuff that they extract a lot of flavor and stuff from, right? And I think I learned from you too, that there, there’s, they make more port and cherry there, they can actually sell?

Alistair Brogan 33:13
The barrels, more port and cherry are there to condition the barrels to then dump it. And, I mean, dump it down the drain on a lot of occasions, and then send them up to Scotland, or come across here more and more, with those condition bars with pork and Sherry that’s sitting in the wood.

Ryan Negley 33:33
You know, it’s not the 19th century anymore, port, isn’t, you know, a very large consumed item that they now have an exit strategy for this oak and, oh, this fledgling little whiskey industry, they can use it because they’re cheap bastards, and they’ll take any used oak barrel, and they get their hands on kind of idea, right? And then all of a sudden, you know, whiskey goes this, port goes this, well, there’s no supply for this. Well, yeah there is, we’re going to make some port you’re going to put in that barrel, because we need that flavor, right? Yeah.

Cory Comer 34:00
And so I think that’s really cool though, that the category opens up possibilities of us adopting those types of barrels stuff here to to give more creativity and flavor to the spirit.

Ryan Negley 34:09
Yeah, the American whiskey consumer had never tasted a bourbon that was finished in, in a in a wine barrel, or a fortified wine barrel or anything else like that, really, until the until the 90s and 2000s and that’s the craft industry coming in and saying, We don’t have to do what you all have been doing this whole time, the idea that creating something sexy has to be based on tradition. You know, that’s, that’s, that’s, that’s an old way of thinking. Let’s find new flavors, and let’s find new avenues, a way to find that flavor with the blossoming, you know, craft distilling industry that started happening at the end of the 90s and early 2000s, it was an absolute boon for for the consumer to find new flavors.

And now, you know, the big industries have have caught on, and they they go out there and they innovate, and they’re finishing in wine barrels, and they’re creating American single malt whiskeys from the biggest houses in the world now. And this craft influence over this modern way that we’re consuming whiskey is is pretty wonderful. It’s, and it’s a great place to be in, you know, it’s, it’s a great place to feel influential when, when you’re, you know the larger house that you’re involved in, you know the smaller piece of the puzzle that you are. And I think that’s why a lot of us are in the craft industry, is to kind of put out some of that personal creativity and and, and be a part of this, this, this flavor spectrum.

Ryan Hall 35:49
So you had mentioned that you know you’re the oldest product you’re putting out now is seven years old, seven years ago, American Single Malt, where did it stand then? And did you foresee just this this blossoming industry, and in this, in the American Single Malt category.

Alistair Brogan 36:05
If you build it, people will come. No, I was pretty naive. I just thought, you know, I this is what I want to do. And, you know, America is big country, and if I get a high quality product in what I am passionate about, other things will fall now that’s not, you know, great business sense, I get that. But remember, this was going to be a hobby for me, so I started, and as soon as you start, it just starts rolling on, because you’ve got to wait a long time for that whiskey to know whether or what that whiskey is going to turn out with. I mean, even after two years being a straight whiskey here with this climate, it wasn’t there. We waited, we waited, we waited another year before we felt there was right to put in the market. And that was a whole year addition to what we thought, which we that was the right choice, absolutely.

Ryan Negley 37:01
You know, again, everybody’s got a different background story on how what led them to craft distilling, and what led them into this industry as a whole. And, and his is coming from Scotland, right? Like growing up with malt whiskey and and understanding that malt whiskey, whereas a lot of the American single malt whiskey community, they come from leaving craft brewing, right? So their knowledge of barley is a different style of barley than the barley that he’s used to tasting and used to and learned about using from his distiller friends in Scotland. So even within American single malt. The different backgrounds are dictating, you know, the kind of, the kind of the styles and flavors of whiskey, right, just purely based on where you were born, you know.

Cory Comer 37:51
I’m sure we could have a whole episode that’s dedicated to Bourbon monster that’s, you know, in terms of its size, the behemoth stuff that it is, the allocation, which is, you know, marketing words for “You paid too much”. But I mean getting down to the craft side, I mean even the choice of barley, you’re saying is, is, is critical to making a good product.

Alistair Brogan 38:12
Well, you know, to Ryan’s point about the backgrounds of what brewery brewing, brewery backgrounds to what the people in craft is doing. So when I came across I wanted to make sure I started with the very best. And the malted barley living across is is grown for single malt. Most of the malted barley in the US, they don’t use malted barley in the US as flavoring to whiskey. You use it to help break maybe five 6% to help break down the enzymes in the mash for bourbons, but they don’t use it as a flavoring, and so it’s very, very different.

So bringing that in, I knew I wasn’t going to get any wayward flavors. I knew the protein levels, I knew the sugar levels, I knew the yields are going to get. So stick to that basis. I imported that there’s three or four of us in us doing that, I imported the yeast, which, 65% of all single malt whisky throughout the world is made from this, this type of yeast, this make of yeast. So I imported those two things. I imported the still from Forsyths and Rothes, a pot still that was really designed for really the climate in American single malt whiskey. Yeah,

Cory Comer 39:18
So tell us about that a little bit more. Because, okay, yeah. I mean, that’s a very unique. you have a challenge here, because we are dry, climate, high altitude, not like Scotland at all, right, not like Kentucky. Tell us about that.

Alistair Brogan 39:31
So going from the pot still bringing that in, one of the reasons why it was designed for America was because it goes into new oak barrels. So what we wanted to do was have a pot still that gave us less reflux. Less reflux means you get heavier whiskey. Heavier whiskey then has got a better chance of living with that new char than, let’s say, a light whiskey would have where it could be overtaken by the barrel. You know, bourbons eventually get overtaken by the barrel, but we wanted that heavy whiskey to go in, so it stood a better chance. So coming out with a seven year old now, you know, we’re tasting it constantly, because where, when is it going to actually peak? Now, I’m not going to be the best judge of that, because I’m more not second Phil will be the sort of Ryan and rest of the people who are more used to that char. But where’s it going to go? So stick to those three basics, the still the malted barley and the yeast. There’s enough here in America, enough here in Colorado, enough here in Boulder to then really make it distinctive.

So the climate, which has a huge impact on the maturation side the new oak barrel, which it’s uniquely American climate, uniquely Colorado. And then we use El Dorado water six miles down the road from here, which is again uniquely boulder. So there is enough of that. You know, in Scotland, a lot of them are using the same use, same same malted barley. They’re located next to each other, same owner, same distillers. The unique part of their whiskeys is influenced by the shapes that is shape of the still. So our still was designed with that specifically in mind. And what we’ve created is a very unique whiskey that only that still can, can, can provide. Now we are actually doing some whiskey. We’re playing around with other malting houses and creating whiskeys with local malted barley. And we’re doing the processes identical in every way, but the difference is unbelievable, not in a bad way, uniqueness. It’s really, really different and it’s fun. It really, really is to see those differences.

Ryan Negley 41:51
And to kind of to touch on it from a Scotch drinkers, you know, take Glenn morangi would make a terrible American single wall right there still is 100 feet tall or whatever, and tall and skinny and, you know, kind of a pop hat looking, looking thing, and it’s a lot of reflux. It’s really clean, really, really, you know, it’s pretty, but it’s really, really light on the palette. Well, that’s not going to age in fresh oak, you know, well, right in a hot climate, Edradour on the other hand, you know, stumpy little thing making some big, fat, rich whiskey. I bet that would make pretty good American Singapore whiskey, you know. So the shape of the still is is vital to the flavor of of our whiskey.

Cory Comer 42:34
Let’s speak a little bit to the some of the challenges, but even the benefits of aging in a dry, high climate like Colorado, especially with some variance in weather, it gets a little bit little bit warm in the summer, a little cool in the winter, right?

Ryan Negley 42:45
Yeah, it’s, it’s neat, because it is unique to the traditional whiskey world. We know Scotland’s temperate climate. We know Kentucky’s, you know, hot, cold, but the humidity level is always, you know, high. Here in the Southwest, and the rest of the West, you know, our humidity levels are, are, you know, go all over the place. And so that’s kind of the super fun thing to I would you said advantage versus disadvantage. The disadvantage, the scare of it going into it was, shit is going to get over, you know, what is, what is the precipice where, oh, we’re going to hit it. It’s gonna be, you know, too much. And now we gotta, everything’s gotta be, you know, done under X amount of years old. We haven’t hit that yet. Our friends in the state that are also making single malt whiskey that are a few years ahead of us, you know, we’re tasting their whiskey too Right? And and they haven’t hit, you know, a mark that’s, that’s too much oak. So the the fear, I think, as we’ve gotten into it over the years, has gone down, and the joy of tasting really delicious, you know, five, six, seven, you know, coming up on some eight year stuff, whiskey is, is, is, is just fun. It’s fun, you know. But what we don’t age faster out here like that, we have to be absolutely implicit about that. We don’t say that, you know, our drier climate is aging whiskey faster. It’s aging whiskey differently. Interesting. Aging whiskey differently. And for right now, we’re experiencing a ton of oak impact in a shorter amount of time. That doesn’t mean that esters are forming at a faster rate, that just means we’re seeing more oak impact at a faster time.

Alistair Brogan 44:25
We discussed earlier about the other impact is, because we’ve got this semi arid climate, we get huge swings in temperature, swings in temperature, it swings in pressure, so that the pressure in the barrel is trying to catch up with the pressure outside, and vice versa. So when you put that barrel, we put our new make spirit, we put our new make spirit, and pump the barrel. What easily happens is a lot, maybe seven, eight liters, will soak into that chart, those canals that have been created by that that char filter. And then what happens is, because of those swings and pressures, it gets sucked into that char filter. It’s a. Huge rate, and Best guess will be two to three times faster, because what then happens is the ethanol and the water particles are getting extracted through the porous skin of the oak, but they’re getting extracted at a different proportion than you would if you were in Scotland or in the northwest, if you were in Santa Fe if you were in Texas. And what we find here is we put our liquid in about 120 proof 60 ABV and it’ll climb, because the water particles are getting, getting extracted at disproportional rate. Then, then maybe, if you were another climate, interesting, whereas in, you know, the Pacific Northwest temperate climate where you’re you’re putting it in it, let’s say 120 go down. So because of the humid humidity, dry or warm humidity out in the atmosphere.

Ryan Negley 45:54
And that’s what’s great talking about American single malt whiskey is just by pure size of our country, right? And the latitude lines that we hit, absolutely you can make single malt whiskey in the south of Texas, or, excuse me, the east of Texas, and it’s gonna, you know, gonna have a ton of we got long, hot, hot summers, yeah, whereas you go Northwest Maine, you know, Minnesota, yeah, Alaska, yeah, great single malt whiskey coming out of Alaska. You know, there with whiskey. If we took our whiskeys and traded them in aging locations, man, it would. We would have different whiskey if we got, you know.

Ryan Hall 46:30
So, what is it coming out of the barrel? Then, once you decide to crack the barrel,

Ryan Negley 46:33
And that is proprietary information.

Ryan Hall 46:39
Eventually, like even out, I guess is my question.

Alistair Brogan 46:44
No, not yet, sure the seven year old will come out on average, because every bar is going to be different. On average is coming a little higher. Oh, so yeah, and you know, that’s one of the reasons you can’t get in the barrel for 20 years, because it’s not going to be it’s not there won’t be anything, there won’t be anything, there won’t be anything left. And it’s fascinating, because America has got, I don’t know, five micro climates are going to have completely different tastes of whiskey, even though it might be identical whiskey. Whereas, you know, Scotland’s got one climate, cold, cold and cold, which, you know, and to and wet, yeah. And to Ryan’s point, you know, we never say, none of us ever say that age is faster. There are chemical reactions that are happening in that barrel will not happen Scotland will not happen in another state of this country, in the country, but vice versa, things are going and that’s the fascinating thing, where the whiskey especially single malt, because there is a depth and complexity to single malt whiskey that I would suggest over bourbon, so as you see these the new the states opening up single malt whiskeys, it’s going to be a fascinating and it is taste profiles of each state. Yeah, and Colorado has got, I mean, we will I think we’re second as far as population to distilleries. You know, we’ve got Colorado, got a lot of experience, but what’s coming out of Colorado is spectacular. Yeah, I’ll tell you, when you when you look at the category of of whiskey in America, what’s coming out Colorado is pretty impressive.

Cory Comer 48:16
I moved out of Arizona to come here, to get to the mountains, and I my whiskey journey started in Arizona and but when I left five years ago, I think there was like five or six distilleries in the entire state, moving here, all sudden, I find the distillers guild the trail map, and I’m like, holy smokes. And I mean, there’s a lot of distilleries here, and I started tasting, I was like, man, these guys are doing some really good stuff. So that ties into, I think, a really good segue into, like, you and I talked about it, right, about Colorado and, like, what people’s expectations in the US? Because there are those people out there says, No, I will only buy bourbon from Kentucky, right? I mean, when we cross into Tennessee, right? And instead, there’s, I mean, there’s places all over the country, they’re doing really well, but Colorado, you mentioned on the call that there’s, there’s a growing appetite for Colorado whiskey. Yeah, tell me why. And what do you guys see for the future of Colorado and the whiskey industry?

Ryan Negley 49:11
I think what we’ve got here is just, besides being just this wonderful, magical place that we all get to be in here. You follow craft brewing and you follow craft distilling. There’s a ton of distilleries in Oregon and in California and in New York and in Colorado, because that’s in Michigan, there’s, there’s a lot of craft brewing that was going on there. Colorado, though, is is unique, because we’re there’s a lot of like mindedness in the sense that people want to express their creativity here, and so we have just a lot of very passionate people that are already in the distilling industry, because Colorado was a place that that. Heart, you know, really takes this, these people that want to get creative with whatever it is they want to do, and they want to do it here and and you can find, you don’t have to throw a rock very far to find somebody else that says, Yeah, I wanted to be a piece of that creative thing that you’re doing, too. Doesn’t have to be part of the same industry. But there’s a mindset here that that we want to see other people’s fun, creative ideas blossom and grow, and it’s and there is something special out here. And is our climate different? Absolutely, you know. But the fact that matter is, we’re all taking the same base of four ingredients of of grains and water and yeast and oak and making a product, you know, at the, you know, brass scale. But what we’re doing out here is, is being different on purpose, right? And being different not for the sake of, I just want to be different from Kentucky, but it’s being different because we like being different.

Alistair Brogan 51:02
And on that, you know that community side of the distillers, we had our you mentioned the spirits trail? Yeah, the spirits trail is the only community owned trail for whiskey in or distiller distillers in the whole of the US, because a lot of privately owned, like the, you know, there’s a conglomerate of companies or distilleries like the Kentucky trail, whereas this is community owned. So we are all there for each other. As far as trying to raise, not raise the standards, but raise the profile of Colorado. Raise the profile of Colorado distilling and a great place to be, yeah.

Cory Comer 51:48
That perception is changing, right? I mean, you mentioned as not just seeing Colorado is just two year old whiskey, anymore right?

Ryan Negley 51:54
Yeah. And that’s the huge part, right? There is, is the rest of the country that is kind of just still getting into the craft distilling world, that is, you know, five to 710, years behind Colorado, they’re just now putting out their two year old whiskey and and we’re past that, you know, consistently. You know, our top distilleries are, you know, five to 10 year old whiskey. And out here, five year old whiskey is really good. A few of us have proven that point. A five year old whiskey can be really good and world class whiskey. And it’s, it’s, it’s something that I it’s not stopping, you know, we’re going to continue, just with our depth of distilleries that we have here, with the array of spirits that are coming out of Colorado, we’re going to continue to be a force as a whole, you know, it’s not, I don’t say we as Boulder Spirits, I say we as Colorado.

Ryan Hall 52:44
Where do you think the industry is sitting right now? Because, because Colorado is kind of known as a beer state, right? Craft, craft beer. Where do you think it’s it’s sitting now, currently, and where’s it going, as far as being known as, like a whiskey state.

Ryan Negley 52:58
If you’re a, if you’re in the whiskey world, right? If you’re a whiskey person, if you’re in your local whiskey club, and you’re like, you’re, you’ve already heard about Colorado, you know, if you’re east of the Mississippi, you know Colorado’s, you know, of course, you know New Belgium and Fat Tire and all these, you know these things that started Coors, all those, right, Ska down in Durango, all these, these great folks that have been doing stuff for 20 plus years and now 150 20 plus years and now 150 years. But, man, whiskey, you know, some of us have distilling licenses, you know, pushing 20 years old now. So we, we’ve got almost a legacy. That’s too big of a word to use yet, but we’ve been there. Yeah, we’ve got some we’ve got some time on the rest of the country, you know, outside of, outside of Kentucky. And we were the first to really start making big splashes outside of Kentucky.

Cory Comer 53:46
Well, and big splashes, you guys have won a number of awards, but there’s you’ve had some recognition recently in the press and stuff like that. Tell us about some of those.

Ryan Negley 53:55
I think, awards are great. Awards are great. They do mean a lot, especially when they’re coming from well known resources and the proper blind tastings and all of that. You know, getting making Fred Minnick’s list, you know, to wrap up 2022 that was massive. Thanks, Fred. You know, have been making, you know, top 10 out of that list of American whiskeys for a year. That sounds massive. Our award comes from when people visit the distillery, and they come from all over the country and world, and they take the time to come in here and they say, Holy shit, this is amazing whiskey. You guys are doing this here in this town, you know, in this state, that those are the awards. You know, that’s what means absolutely the most. Those are the people that are going to go tell their friends Hey next time you’re in Colorado or hey, if you see the stuff on the shelf, go pick up some of this stuff. That’s where that those are the awards.

Alistair Brogan 54:53
About 50% of the people who walk through that door from outer state, and a lot of them have heard what we’ve done. And taking that opportunity, because in the US, you can there’s no direct to consumer from right? So, and you know, we’ve got a reasonable footprint in the US, but we’re not throughout the whole us, and that’s coming, because you go to balance that distribution versus your stock, you know, that kind of thing. But, yeah, we, I get the biggest pleasure not sitting in the back, doing accounts, sitting at the front. And actually, it’s a little bit of a scramble. He comes into work on the computer, and it’s a little bit of scramble of five, six people come in great, 10 minutes, half an hour, an hour, standing with people, tasting our products, right? And, you know, I get more pleasure that’s, that’s better than all the awards I got a lot of pleasure out of that.

Ryan Negley 55:45
It’s awesome. Yeah, we didn’t, we didn’t have to pay to enter that contest. You know, they’re coming willingly to us to sample some products, and absolutely grateful for, for the awards we have had, you know, but the consumer is, is the ultimate, uh, that’s who we’re after. Really, who we’re after is, let’s convince the consumer that bourbon doesn’t have to be from Kentucky, and let’s convince the bourbon consumer that single malt doesn’t mean scotch. And let’s talk about how great these two things can be in their own lanes.

Cory Comer 56:18
And you break it, you take it down from going after awards and even trying to tackle, I mean, you mentioned, you’re not going to try to convert bourbon lovers into, yeah, you want to, you want to influence that, right? But you mentioned the steak and potatoes, right? But you take that down a little bit to the community. And you talked about the community of distillery stuff, but let’s talk about the community for a minute. Because one of our passions, personally, as in part of this thing too. Do you want to focus on what you guys are doing back to community as a segment’s we’re calling “The Angel’s Share”, appropriately, right? And so tell us a little bit how you’ve, how you guys been giving back the community. And I think specifically, there was a you brought some stuff up earlier in our discussions, but also specifically about the Marshall fire, right? Yeah, obviously there was a devastating fire. National News, 1084 homes, yeah. 1084 homes, yeah. So tell us a bit more about that project. Then what else you guys are doing for that?

Ryan Negley 57:18
Yeah? Yeah, so whiskey is an expensive hobby. No, he’s, it’s beyond that now, but whiskey is, is, of course, capital intensive. And we’re small business, you know, we’re a tiny little baby business. And when tragedy, you know happens to a community. You know, everybody wants to help out any way that they can. Small Businesses will do what they can, but typically, you know, you find whatever, how much ever is in your wallet, and you can open up, but we have whiskey and this stuff can can be more than just an intrinsic Cost of Goods dollar value, right? Whiskey itself is, is about sharing and about, you know, having conversation and building community in and of itself. So when the fire happened, you know, of course, we wanted to help there’s just, you know, what the hell do you do about, you know, 1000 people, families losing their homes. And you know, beyond that, all those that were damaged, you know, just the ones that burned down. But there was a fund that was built, the boulder Community Fund, and we said, alright, let’s do something for that. We have whiskey. Let’s, let’s make a whiskey for it. The fire department, as it turns out, was very busy at that time, but I had the idea to reach out to them and say, Hey, ladies and gentlemen of you know, Boulder Fire, here’s an idea. We want to make a batch of whiskey, but we need your help to help, you know, promote and sell this stuff so we can raise some funds. And so we made a batch of whiskey that was three barrels big, American single malt whiskey. The few folks in the fire department, fire and rescue, came in here, a few local influencers, a couple national influencers, all came in here to help pick this, this batch of whiskey that we were going to use. And it was incredible time sitting around the table, you know, was it with the fire chief, you know, listening to this, you know, their story of what was going on during, during the fire and all that kind of stuff. And we drank some whiskey, you know, we tasted whiskey. We all said, Oh, we like this one, but, but listening to each other’s stories, you know, about, about where they were that day and how it impacted them, that was that was the coolest part. Fast forward a few months. This batch of with whiskey gets put together. I forget how many bottles, four or 500 bottles, we were able to sell this whiskey. Of course, we were able to raise way more money than we could have ever done just as a small business and shipping our few bucks into the kitty. So when all was said and done, you know, we sold out of this whiskey. I was bottled at a very specific number of one 108.4 proof for the 1084 homes. And yeah, it was, I mean, it took a few months to sell all of it, but I forget the final number.

Alistair Brogan 1:00:17
It was like the final number was just, just over $40,000 Yeah, are able to write two different checks over two periods of time. And, you know, it was great.

Ryan Negley 1:00:28
I don’t know if you have a chance to donate $40,000 or not, but it feels pretty cool.

Cory Comer 1:00:36
Wow, yeah. And you’re, you mentioned, there’s a lot of things you guys are given to.

Alistair Brogan 1:00:40
You know, to Ryan’s point about whiskey is the cost of goods for us. If we’ve got the whiskey, we try and we try and use it. And you know, we, every year, probably 30 or 40 charities will give like tours, free tours out tour for 10 people. We’ll give old fashioned kits with our whiskies in and they then go to auction, and they tend to raise a pretty, I mean, a tour that would cost two-hundred dollars, if you booked online, seven, eight-hundred sometimes, which is great, because the charities benefit for less input for buyers. We recently did two, but two full bars of single malt whiskey, a charity event for mossana, which is a an educational charity, actually a boulder. It was, it was, it was founded by a girl of CU actually about 15 years ago. And so we donated about one barrel whiskey. And the bidding went up, up, up, $15,000 that’s the highest I’ve seen And so I threw another barrel in $15,000 so in a matter of five minutes, $30,000 which is great. And you know, yeah, when these opportunities come, there are things close to our hearts. Uh, musna was close to our heart, the Marshall fire, but I wasn’t here at the time, but we could, which we see the Burning Flow here, yeah, into it. So I had a real impact on this and these things. You know, if things come up like that, we will, we’ll do our best we can.

Cory Comer 1:02:12
Yeah, awesome. Alistair Ryan, thank you for your time today. It’s been awesome. We learned a lot, and I think our audience is gonna really enjoy learning about what you guys know with the American Single Malt. And I really appreciate you guys. Yeah. Thanks

Ryan Negley 1:02:25
Yeah, thanks so much for having us.

Alistair Brogan 1:02:26
We really Yeah. Thanks, Ryan, thanks, Cory.

Ryan Hall 1:02:29
Thank you very much,

Cory Comer 1:02:32
Ryan. Thanks for letting us try some whiskey here. Tell us what are we tasting and tell us all about it.

Ryan Negley 1:02:38
Yeah. So these are two latest special releases, our limited time offerings for fall of 23 the second in our series of annual special releases is our 10 essentials. The last year’s special release, inaugural special release is called the trailhead. So for us, it’s gonna have an outdoors theme. In this case, we’re on the trail. So last year we started the our mission at the trailhead this year, we’ve packed our bag with all the essentials that you need for a successful, you know, adventure out in the forest in the mountains. In our case, it’s really referring to the ingredients. There’s not technically 10 ingredients in it, but it is our first showcase of using multiple styles of finishing oaks. So in this whiskey, there’s five total casks, one cask that was ex Armagnac, one cask that was ex Tawny Port, one cask that was ex Sherry, all three of those casts, plus two barrels of straight American seeing them all went into making this, this blend, we brought it down to 49 and a half percent ABV for two reasons. One, water is the most important essential of any hike. And so really, at the end of any hike, you want a nice, refreshing whiskey that’s not too hot, it’s not too high, that 50% stuff that’s just too much before nine and a half percent. And it just drank very well. We I thought about it at about 110 but it was just too much spice going on. And so right at this fifty-percent mark, this really says forthy-nine and a half percent mark, I feel it’s just drinking, drinking really well. And this is absolutely an expression of of oak spice. Again, Americans that are so used to Bourbon and or straight whiskeys. We’re used to American oak. This is an exploration of not just one style of finishing oak, but three different styles all put together, and so a huge barrage of spice kind of comes at you from the first time it hits the palate on the nose. I’ll happily take your lead on what you guys are getting off. Off the nose.

Ryan Hall 1:04:41
I’m smelling some vanilla.

Ryan Negley 1:04:46
Yeah, the vanilla just certainly does pop off. You know that that’s, that’s one of the, the predominant kind of, kind of creamy notes that will get in there.

Cory Comer 1:04:55
I’m getting, I’m getting, like, spices, almost like a Christmas clove

Ryan Negley 1:05:00
yeah, very, very clovey, very nutmeg in there, for sure. There you go. And then a, kind of a, like a fruit leather, as far as a fruit note goes.

Alistair Brogan 1:05:13
He’s already got a little bit of a taste, you know what’s for you?

What’s, what’s for me, is interesting is, first of all, Sherry, the port, the armack and our flagship single malt, each of those individually are great, right? And you can pick up those notes of, you know, the dark fruits for the poor. I would always go Tiki with the with the sherry. But for this, it’s a blend. And one, it’s a blend. And what was interesting was the blend is not necessarily in even proportions, it’s a blend. So everything was different, and it changed the whole profile each time. And for me, nothing stands out from Port Sherry Armegnac. It’s that lovely blend which is very different from each one.

Ryan Negley 1:05:56
And we took a long time proof in this whiskey from out of cask into tote, into and a bottle was about a four month process. Oh, wow. So we spent a lot of time just slowly adding the water, slowly stirring it as we’re as we’re agitating it and mixing the water in. And we’re very, very careful with this whiskey from the from the beginning to the end,

Cory Comer 1:06:22
Tell us what, what is your opinion of what we should be tasting on the on the palate here, I’ve got, I’ve got a lot of you know, it’s very good.

Ryan Negley 1:06:31
I don’t ever really like to tell anybody flavors like, you know, some people don’t like mushrooms, and some people like mushrooms, right? So I just, I don’t ever want to put out a flavor, the flavors that I really think everyone should be getting from this are amazing and delicious. Other than that.

Cory Comer 1:06:47
I’m going to add those to my tasting notes. I’m getting. I’m getting a pretty strong sense of my favorite spirits, for some reason, remind me of Christmas, and just even on the nose and even on the palate, tastes a lot like Christmas, and I’m getting almost like with that heat, almost like a cinnamony flavor that’s coming out there, and that fruit, though, and that that lingers on the palette, yeah, it’s not a, it’s not a doesn’t finish off abruptly. It just kind of slowly.

Ryan Negley 1:07:16
All of our whiskeys, and I think it’s partly are still partly. Are, you know, just everything about how we how we make an age of whiskey, but we do take time with the proofing, and more important than the flavor is the texture and how it finishes. Yeah, flavors are, again, they’re so subjective that we can find somebody that likes, you know, a certain kind of whiskey versus this kind of whiskey, but texture and the finish, that’s, you know, that’s showing off how we’re distilling, right?

Ryan Hall 1:07:46
It’s very creamy.

Cory Comer 1:07:48
Yeah, and the great the finish, the finish just lingers and just yeah, just hangs in there.

Ryan Negley 1:07:54
This is, I will say, one flavor about this whiskey that most Americans don’t really get, but marzipan, I guess this is an absolute marzipan of a whiskey.

Alistair Brogan 1:08:05
It’s a sum of the four parts. It’s not the individual ones. If you, if you tasted the individual ones, they’re very, very unique, and got real prominent flavor profiles. When you blend it into that the way it’s been blended, it’s, it calms everything down a little bit. So this is probably one of the most difficult to identify those flavors. Yeah, yeah. Over the individual ones, sherry, port, armegnac,

Ryan Negley 1:08:34
But that kind of depth, you know, as a whiskey consumer, that’s what I that’s what I enjoy. That’s beautiful mix, really good. And then the next one over here on the right, straight whiskey, right? So this is just an expression of American oak. We started with the 10 essentials, because I wanted to give you that depth of different styles of flavor and bring it back to straight American whiskey so we know what, what just American oak tastes like, right? Just those vanillas that are in American oaks that aren’t in some of the other, you know, European oaks. And give you some of the, take away, some of those elements of of the fruits and the fortified wines, right? And just get back to what straight American whiskey is. And for us, the ability to put bottled and bond on a label that was huge, that was absolutely a huge piece of our growth and development. And today, you know, as is, we’re filming this, of course, but in the, in the greater scheme of things, this is the oldest bottleneck bond single malt in the United States that has seven years on it, nobody’s been able to hit that mark and put that since on and so, of course, that means it’s, it’s straight whiskey, right? It never saw used oak at any point in its life. This is strictly virgin, freshly charred oak of the same season. It’s not seven and eight years put together, right? It’s bottled and bond American whiskey first. And so really, this is, it’s fun for. Us to be able to stay all those things, and it’s fun for us to express a whiskey that the still was built around, yeah, you know, and it’s great.

Alistair Brogan 1:10:07
You know, Americans don’t tend to put each statement. This age statement really is not about all. Look how old it is. It’s almost a statement we’re here now as far as ages, yes, absolutely. I mean letting everyone know, yeah, explain everything. Because I don’t think each statements are going to be really a thing with single malt whiskeys going forward as they’re they are really with the Bourbons this Scotch whiskey, yeah, they’ve got themselves in a bit of a hole. So you know what the Scotch Whiskey is. Now it’s going to be the youngest bar. So if the youngest bar is five years has to be five years, 10 years, and it can be whatever after that. As Ryan said, this is all seven years. This is not there’s no younger one than that. There’s no older one than that.

Ryan Negley 1:10:50
And certainly the you know, this had a lot of of specifically European oak spice to it. And the spices here, it’s absolutely like that cinnamon, that classic American whiskey, especially in Colorado. We all have this, this cinnamon that rips right down the middle of the palate, and then where are the fruit notes developing when this stuff is younger, it’s, it’s a lot more apple forward as we’re getting into the age, it’s, it’s kind of, you know, evolving. And, you know, at the four and five year mark, there’s a little bit of that stewed apple. And it’s seven year mark, it’s just changed into, you know, for me, it’s, it’s almost like apricotty, you know, very floral. Like, yes, sweet, but like, like apricot, like, walking through the orchard, kind of apricot.

Cory Comer 1:11:33
I was actually thinking peaches, water out of oranges, yeah, orange peel.

Ryan Negley 1:11:39
But this is, this is an expression of of American single malt whiskey, right?

Cory Comer 1:11:46
But you’re absolutely right. It kind of has that same vanilla, caramel, honey profile that is very common, right in the American and, yeah, not as sweet as bourbon, obviously, but it’s, it’s got a good it’s got a good nose, and that palette is got a good finish too.

Ryan Negley 1:12:01
At 100 proof that’s drinking real nice, yeah, absolutely.

Ryan Hall 1:12:03
And for me, it tastes where this one is very creamy, this one, this one is very crisp.

Alistair Brogan 1:12:11
So this would always be like my go-to whereas, this would be, you know, after dinner, an occasion.

Cory Comer 1:12:19
This is like, yeah, this is like a nightly dinner. This is Christmas dinner.

Ryan Negley 1:12:27
Well, Cheers, guys, I appreciate y’all coming down absolutely whiskey, seeing the place. Yeah, guys, tr,

Cory Comer 1:12:40
if you made it this far. Thank you for watching the episode and enjoying the interview with us. We want to take a minute though to just kind of catch you up with who we are, right and why we’re doing this. But Ryan and I, we met a few years ago. We were both in the same foster agency, and we’re fostering kids, and we end up both ended up adopting kids out of the out of the foster system and and so. But over time, just got started to get together and hanging out and drinking whiskey. Ryan was very new to it. I was little bit further along in my journey, but in a strike up a really good friendship, enjoying a lot of good whiskey, just chatting about life and fostering and and obviously, you know, tell them what you do for a living.

Ryan Hall 1:13:29
So doing video and like video production, photography and podcast, is actually my day job. And so it’s something that I’m really passionate about something that I went to school for, and I’ve been doing for a really long time. And so yeah, like, this ties two of the two of my passions together. And so I think when, when I first started getting into whiskey, it was actually because my wife had got me a Christmas present that included, that included, like, whiskey glasses and stuff, and I took a picture appreciating it, and I posted it on social media, and you reached out and like, hey, what you got in that glass? And that’s what kind of started. Like, we didn’t, we didn’t, I didn’t really know you drink whiskey. I was kind of starting, you know, barely starting getting into it. And then, yeah, so we started going out, checking out, just local, would you call them bars or

Cory Comer 1:14:22
Cork and Cask? I mean, there was a couple other places, you know, we Yeah, what the low place we enjoyed? And just started exploring, trying to find places that had good, obviously, good whiskey lists, right, to pick from and yeah, so kind of pick what we wanted to but yeah. I mean, my journey for whiskey started 11 years ago, actually, 12 years ago now. And I was at a work conference in North Carolina, and one of my colleagues there had brought along a 12 year old scotch, and it was Glenfiddich I believe may have been Glenlivet one of the two, but it was 12 year old scotch, and just, hey, what do you. Out there, I wasn’t much of a drinker, like I didn’t, yeah, occasional cocktail or beer, you know, but wasn’t, wasn’t a big drinker. Yeah, and anyways, Nick Neitzel, all this is a shout out to you. Thank you for introducing me to whiskey, because look how far I’ve come. But yeah, it was, and it was down the rabbit hole, right, dove into scotches and work my way backwards. I’m a little bit of a, as Ryan Negley put in the episode, I’m a black sheep, right? And it was. It’s been a fun journey, though, and moving up here to Colorado, out of Arizona, I landed right in a prime state that’s doing has a huge craft distilling industry, and it’s been a ton of fun to go explore, just a lot of good, honest people and stuff. And so it’s been fun. But I remember posing the question to you, right? Because I, I do marketing for a living. That’s, that’s my, my day job, and we’ve just done this a number of times. And I just, you know, thinking some cool stuff we could do. And I just, like, I said to a text one day, it said, you want to start a podcast?

Ryan Hall 1:15:57
Yeah. I think it was like, a lot of guys in their 30s are like, Hey, we should start a podcast.

Cory Comer 1:16:03
But to be to be true, I was, we weren’t, we weren’t drinking. I like so that we’ve grown to regret, right? And but it was something was hatched out of just imagination and passion. So it’s been a lot of fun, and we’ve had, we’ve already, we’ve had numerous people we have to thank along the way, including Matt Hondorf,

Ryan Hall 1:16:27
Colorado Spirits Sollective, Whiskey Church

Cory Comer 1:16:30
Yep. Whiskey Church, Colorado Springs. He’s been instrumental in helping us get connected with some of these distillers, introducing us to, you know, on the head distiller, or the owner, founders of these distilleries, and we’ve done a lot to the whiskey church stuff, which is super, it’s been super fun.

Ryan Hall 1:16:44
Yeah, I gotta, I gotta say a huge thanks to Matt, because he kind of plugged us into the industry, like, without even having the podcast ready to go or anything. He’s like, Yeah, you know, come in and I’ll introduce you to some, to some folks. And, yeah, it was, it was really cool.

Cory Comer 1:16:58
Even, even initially, you know, trying to offer us equipment that, yeah, I don’t think we ended up taking them up on. But obviously, he’s been a huge he’s been a huge player already for us. And so it’s been good. It’s been it’s been fun. And I’m excited to to embark on this journey with with you guys, and get to share some really cool characters and enjoy some really good whiskey along the way, and we’re gonna show some unconventional sides too. You know, he mentioned earlier, the farmers, but we’ve got, we’ve got on the docket some characters who are not necessarily forefront in the scene because ou know them from their labels, but they’re obviously big players in the distilling industry here, and they’re farmers and other players stuff in the space. So we’re super excited about that. So I’m, I’m excited to do this with with you a good friend, someone who we shared a lot of good moments with already.

Ryan Hall 1:17:51
Yeah, I’m excited to be doing this with you as well. And thanks for bringing me along on this journey, kind of, kind of being my Yoda in this, this new venture, but yeah, it’s been a it’s been a ton of fun, and I look forward to bringing out more episodes talking to more people in the industry.

Cory Comer 1:18:09
Absolutely. Yeah, so Well, cheers to you guys. We’ll see you in the next episode.

Ryan Hall 1:18:16
Thank you for joining us on whiskey, wanderlust. Subscribe to the show on YouTube, Apple podcasts, Spotify Amazon music and all other major podcast platforms, and be sure to leave us a rating and review. Follow us on social media and visit us online at WhiskeyWanderlust.co.