Jake Lewellen: Welcome back to another episode of the bourbon lens with your host Jake and Scott and this week's episode we're going single malt with a Kentucky distillery sit back and buckle into the latest episode of the Bourbon Lens. We are joined by Brian and Bryon Yep, this is going to be confusing today here in the podcast,

Brian Sprance: there.

Bryon Martin: Thank you.

Jake Lewellen: but Brian Sprantz, Master Distiller for New Rift Distillery and Bryon Martin, Sensory and Warehouse Manager. Thank you all for joining us here this Friday afternoon.

Brian Sprance: Thanks for having us.

Bryon Martin: Yeah, great to be here.

Jake Lewellen: excited to

Scott - BourbonLens: You're welcome.

Jake Lewellen: talk about American Single Malt. Scott started us down this road during COVID and we have just never stopped. And it's really cool that a really large scale Kentucky distillery is producing a lot of it on an annual basis. excited to talk about one of your alls passion projects, Brian, with your background, previously Jay being on, and the sensory panel, there's a lot of stuff that went in to creating what we're going to spend the rest of the time talking about, which is the American Single Malt. So this started as a project prior to 2023, but the first was released was in 2023. who wants to walk through, know, how you all decided on American single malt and how these blends came together.

Brian Sprance: Yeah, I can do that. think first and foremost, our single malt whiskey is kind of a testament to Ken Lewis and family who own the distillery. Pretty much from the minute that I put my first foot in the door here was we want to chase quality whiskey. It's not that we don't care about how much things cost, but it was always kind of we were given that license to pursue what we thought was going to be. capable of making great whiskey, whether that was the raw materials that we were using, whether it was the barrels that we were sourcing, but we were very fortunate to kind of have that focus from the beginning of we want you guys to kind of chase the best whiskey. Obviously we are in Kentucky and we do make a lot of traditional bourbon and rye whiskies. You know, that's still a good 70, 75 % of our portfolio every year and that really hasn't shifted too much. But also having that, that kind of like playground, if you will, to like kind of like play around with other things, you know. I, coming from zero experience in making whiskey, obviously was probably more naive than anything and I didn't really have anybody to tell me better. I actually had Ken who was encouraging me to kind of chase things. So when we looked through the lens of like how we made whiskey at New Rift, it was like, okay, well we want to make, for example, like a weeded bourbon. You know, so many distilleries around the US are like, well that just means that you put some raw weed in it and there you go, you have a weeded bourbon. But in my brewing career, I love making... wheat based beers, they are hefeweizen and things of that. there are a lot of different like kind of iterations of wheat, whether they were malted or raw or things like that. we really want to kind of, and we've done this with a few other whiskeys. We've kind of like tried to like encapsulate a miniature recipe into a bigger bourbon recipe, knowing that bourbon obviously has to be 51%. But when you have 49%, they can be cereal grains and you can kind of open up the playbook. And again, we made weeded bourbon for the first time. I think 2015 and we were so used to making 30 % rye bourbon that we were really used to like really spicy distillate and when we the bourbon came off our still for the first time honestly we were a little like huh there's not a lot going on to this and we actually just kind of forgot about that whiskey the weeded bourbon for a couple years and then revisited that after a couple years and then decided to kind of really start making that more of like kind of like our portfolio of everything that we make. But honestly, we were given the creative freedom to kind of chase whatever we wanted. I tell people this all the time, you know. We don't shoot 100%, but we certainly do put our best effort forward. And a lot of people kind of group us into like kind of an R &D distillery or an experimental type distillery. And I just think that we are much more tight on our focus, tighter on our focus of what we actually want to go after. So there's a lot of time put into like recipe creation and sourcing of different grains and stuff like that. you know, in traditional bourbon, if you just want to use like rye or wheat, that that's what you do. But we've just kind of leaned on my background and working with, you know, 30 different yeast strains or 50, 60 types of malted barley's or malted rye's or things like that. I just, I kind of, I called it my brewers toolbox of there's just a lot of more options that I was interested in doing. Again, like my mentor kind of looked at me sideways and just shook his head a lot of times when I told him what I was working on. But the old man has come around in the last couple of years and goes. you know, really like that stuff or, you know, I thought that was, you know, pretty dumb idea, but now I can see kind of where it is. So again, that like kind of ties into the story of like 10 years as an accomplishment for our distillery, but also like having our mentor come in and kind of tell us that like, I see the vision, I didn't understand it in the beginning and kind of like proving our point to him that you can do things just. There's a million different ways to make whiskey. And thankfully we were able to try a lot of different things. And again, it all ties into just finding the best raw materials and barrels. Our entry proof is low at 110. Again, we often call it just we look at whiskey making through the Kentucky regiment and that's what ties into single malt whiskey making. When we started kind of looking down the path of making malt whiskey, the first thing that we did was we made 100 % malted rye. Cause we wondered what that would do in the still, cause we had already made really high rye. And when we made that first batch of a hundred percent malted rye and it came through the still really without issue. That's when I really said, if we can make a hundred percent malted rye, then we can make a hundred percent malted barley. And then the idea was to kind of look through that Kentucky regiment of how we make and use everything that we learned from making our bourbon and rise and like what our fermentation curves are and what our distillation proofs and temps are. You know, so we thought why not sour mash? 100 % single malt and follow kind of all the parameters that we do to make our normal whiskeys and see how it turns out. So we kind of took our baby steps on the single malt program. made a the first whisky was what they call a base malt. It was a think Maris Otter was our very first whiskey and that's often used back in the day in making whiskies over in the UK. It's often used in the brewing industry. So I wanted to figure out kind of a baseline of what that flavor profile was going to be. And when it came off, actually went through, it went through our stills without issue and it had some very interesting, unique flavors. So we thought, okay, if that one works, then a couple of months from then we were like, let's try another one. And again, we stuck with that kind of, let's figure out what these base malts give us. flavor-wise in the distalid. So we went with a Golden Promise which again... Lots of whiskey throughout eons of time have been made with that. But again, sour mashed, we used our same yeast strain and we really,

Scott - BourbonLens: Mm.

Brian Sprance: really liked that one. And they were just completely kind of opposite whiskies. One of them was like really soft and delicate, but the other one was kind of like really like cantaloupe and fruit forward and things like that. So when we got those two whiskies under our belt, I kind of looked around and I said, all right, well those worked. What if? So I had some pretty deep reservations about starting to play with dark malts, caramel malts, especially chocolate malts, things that are really roasted. I was scared of, you we run a beer still in a doubler, so there's live steam going through. I was really concerned about like the stripping of the husk off of some of these malts, and maybe it would give it kind of like an astringent type character. So what we actually did was we made a corn whiskey. who knows where it's sitting in the warehouse, but this corn whiskey was basically a delivery vehicle to see how chocolate malt would run through the still. The whiskey itself was not, we didn't really enjoy it. It was very unbalanced because of the chocolate malt. again, it was like the proving ground for can our equipment handle this? So then once we figured out that it could handle it, then I started writing recipes that were kind of like emulating some more of like English barley wine or American barley wine, obviously sands hops and stuff like that. But a lot of my training in the brewing field was based off of balance. And I knew that like some of the beers that I really enjoyed making that utilized these darker malts, a little goes a long way, you know? So we always were like, kind of, I was focusing in on like 3 % of a chocolate malt or 10 % of a Munich malt. So that third whiskey that we made was kind of, it's internally kind of lovingly called like the barley wine style whiskey. But again, it was 100 % malted barley, but it was using four different types. And it came off and we were super, super, super, super extremely happy with that. And at that point, Ken kind of just said. if you guys have any more ideas. And I said, I sure do, boss man. So we went after a Belgian style

Scott - BourbonLens: Ha ha ha.

Brian Sprance: malt bill. And again, these are all recipes that are kind of based historically off of what you would use in those kind of beer styles back in the day, but kind of like looking at that through the Kentucky regimen. So that's when we got into using special B and all these other types of things. And again, a lot of

Scott - BourbonLens: Mm.

Brian Sprance: what we learned from these malt whiskies, some of the malts that we used in them, those have actually found their way. back home to being used in bourbon and rye. So at the end of making those four types of whiskey, I'll preface this by saying when we started the distillery up, Ken said, there's two rules, don't try to make scotch and don't blow up the distillery basically. We accomplished both of those. But I said, hey, we need to make 100 % peated malt whiskey. And at that point, I think he just rolled his eyes and said, I can't stop this guy. So we did that.

Scott - BourbonLens: Yeah.

Brian Sprance: That was pretty interesting as well. And actually those five were developed and we repeated that probably the first three years of our malt program. And then we had the opportunity to work with our sixth and final malt that actually makes its first appearance this year in our whiskey, which is called Chevalier, which is kind of back to the roots of the initial single malt program. It's a heritage. based malt, but again, those three based malts and then having kind of those different flavors and colors to paint with off of the barley wine type, quad type, and especially the peated whiskey type. We made all of them and we were super happy with how the distillates were tasting and we jokingly just kind of said, well, we'll check back in on these in six or seven years. Hopefully by then we'll

Scott - BourbonLens: Mm.

Brian Sprance: have some whiskey and Ken won't fire us for making all these crazy whiskeys that really don't make any sense. But that was kind of like the origin story, if you will, of the program. The first year to 18 months was kind of developing those five whiskeys that we were going to make. And then each subsequent year we've kind of grouped them into like kind of one month's of production. So now they're not so spread apart. So that's why you'll see like on our age statements, like some of them say they're seven, but you know, I think at least two of these releases have older than 10. year old whiskey. And again, also with this stuff, we hold back a good chunk of it as well. And every year since we've been doing this, we've built the final blend and then we've actually re-barreled into used oak, kind of that DNA of that single batch. So we still have batch one that's sitting in used New Rift Urban Barrels that's sitting in the Rick house. There's probably upwards of 12 year old whiskey in that barrel right now, but that can have a 10 year old age statement. So it's just kind of the evolution. This is never gonna be like the project that keeps the lights on and pays the bills, but it's also making bourbon and rye in and out. Don't get me wrong, it's really fun, but to like kind of keep the creative juices flowing and kind of keeping the team engaged and really trying to push the boundaries of like what people expect out of Kentucky has been pretty rewarding from this program.

Scott - BourbonLens: It sounds also like some of the malts that you've used in this program have transferred over to the to the bourbon and the rye production, right?

Brian Sprance: Yeah, I think a good example is we did a high note release that was called Abbey Malt and that Abbey Malt was a malt that we had kind of not necessarily left over but we had it in the house and we thought we really liked the flavor contribution that it gave to the malt whiskey. What if we make a rye whiskey with it? and that worked. We have a weeded bourbon. None of the weeded bourbon raw materials have gone into a malt whiskey, obviously, because it's 100 % malt, but we've gotten a good snapshot of different roasting. and just different treatments that malt can have, because those often, those we found in our experience translated back to some of the malted barley varieties. So there's

Scott - BourbonLens: Yeah.

Brian Sprance: not a lot of things that we really haven't used or at the minimum tried, but everything that we've kind of like landed on in the early days, something that we would make a batch of, and this is also inclusive of our malt whiskey program. If we liked it, then the next year we made it, we would probably triple production. Next year we would production so not only has the malt whiskey program kind of fallen under that but also like things like a hundred percent malted rye and weeded bourbon and all those other things so it's kind of like a new rift graduation program if you will because again like you got to evaluate it you got to figure out what it's doing at a year and two years old and again when we have that creative freedom to kind of just go into the go into the rick house and start trying different things at different ages Again, always in the back of our heads going, know, what in the heck are we going to do? How are we going to blend this stuff? We were very fortunate to kind of, the three of us got to spend some time over in the UK visiting, you know, quite honestly, some of our heroes and letting them taste what these crazy American distillers think that single malt whiskey tastes like. We weren't sure if they were going to love it or hate it, but it was distinctly ours and they were honestly quite complimentary of it. We thought we were gonna go over there and really get some tidbits or some opinions, some ideas on how they would go about blending. And they just said, you guys have really kind of created something new and unique to yourself. You made it, now go figure out how to blend it. So that was kind of the bigger challenge of the first year. And each year it's gotten easier just because with the experience, we're so much more familiar with the whiskeys that we still spend. ton of time on them, but it's a little bit more like focused as to where we are figuring out kind of where the boundaries are for too much smoke or too much sherry influence and things like that. And we love smoky whiskeys at New Rift. So. When we started in 23, we wanted to like try, we understand how polarizing like a Pete flavor is. So we wanted to incorporate that, but each year it's kind of gotten, we're trying to sneak a little bit more smoke into each year, which will probably culminate in, who knows, 100 % Pete Kentucky single malt whiskey. And I'm sure the internet will just light us on fire and tell us it's the worst thing in the world. And we're going to be like, yeah, but we like it.

Jake Lewellen: Well, and so, you know, I think what's really interesting is the way the laws are written now, right? Because when you all started this project, there was not an American single malt ratification, right? So, you you all are kind of flying by the seat of your pants. And now, you know, I think the most important thing, right, is it's got to be 100 % multi-barley. And then the cupridge you can use is variable, right? You don't have to use new chard oak if you don't want to. So... Byron Martin, right? Like as you all mature these and you go into the warehouse, you know, have you found that single malt is more temperamental? Have you found that it likes maybe used oak versus new coop ridge? Or does it like going straight into second maturation, like into a sherry, but like how have you all kind of figured out where this distillate might live for an extended period of time?

Bryon Martin: Sure, I mean, we're also still only in the fourth release of this, so we're also still learning those things as well. They definitely take on the characteristics of the different barrels. Even the ones that are in used barrels are absolutely delicious. They can definitely take more years, kind of like a single malt stash does as well. Whereas the new wood tastes ready at a younger age. You still get those big wood extracts in the vanilla standard. flavors you attribute more towards American whiskey and bourbons from the New Wood. Except we keep a lot of the sherry or the Stephanie's barrels, the wine barrels in Montiato, all those things typically at lower floors or in our Palatine's warehouse. They don't seem to heat as much, both from an extraction or over extraction, bringing in too much of that flavor profile. But also some of them are a little bit odd shaped and getting them too high and hot up there puts a little bit more of a stress on them. So just from a structural integrity as well, we keep those typically in the slightly cooler temperatures of our warehouses.

Jake Lewellen: Yeah, and I think that's the most interesting thing about what you all are doing versus, you know, a lot of distilleries, you know, especially when they use column stills, but it's let it rip. And they're not blending multiple malts together in like a vatted experience, right? Because that's what you all are ultimately doing is you've got a profile of whatever you want to play with, and then you can bat them back together to create a larger single malt blend. And I'm going to be very particular about this because you all are very particular Kentucky single malt, it doesn't have to say American single malt. There's no part of the legislation that's got to say that. So the Kentucky single malt that you all have created is, you know, uniquely you all and like, you know, it's new riffs house style. And I think the one thing that I always appreciate about new riff is the agricultural component of new riff has always been to the nth degree, whether it's like yellow leming or like all the weird, you know, grains that you all come up with. I just like yellow leming. think it's a fun one. And I probably will mispronounce any of the other ones that I try to pronounce. And then, you know, the other thing is your attention to detail, right? So like, hey, it doesn't need to be too old, malted barley, right? That's great. And bourbon, that's perfectly fine. But like, you know, let's do a Maris Otter or what have you, whatever you to, to showcase that, Hey, like malted barley actually does have a ton of flavor. It doesn't just have to be this grain that creates enzymatic processes that creates alcohol and bloody, blotter. Because that's what Americans think. And they think that all whiskeys has to be all Scotch has to be pitted. It doesn't right and you're showcasing that and to different levels. And so that's what I like as we get into trying the 2023 is just to let people know like you all are doing something uniquely new riffy, but also you all are are staying true to the processes of, you know, what other people are doing worldwide is like taking everything, vatting it together and then creating unique expressions that are, you know, vintages, which I think is a lot of fun. So that leads us to 2023, the first edition of this and. you know, really interesting the code on the bottle. can we talk a little bit about the code and what that means and and why people need to pay attention to to that when they pick it up?

Brian Sprance: Yeah, there's a good amount of education that surrounds some of these whiskies. They are kind of these esoteric weird whiskies. We struggled and finally got there with how are we going to explain this whole project? And we kind of came to the realization of like, this is a lot of information. There is no way we'll ever be able to put that much information on a bottle that will really tell us that it'll give it justice to actually what the project was. So the idea was just to build a code. We knew that this was going to be kind of an annual release. So obviously the first number, 24, that's 2024. The second number is the number of whiskies that went into the blend. Next number is the number of malted barley varieties. And then the final number is the number of cask types that we use. So it's not like the standard matrix of like, all right, we put half of it in the new wood and half of it into used wood. We worked with a cooperage over in Spain where they were actually building new barrels, new char barrels. And then they were putting them into a Solera system. They were filling them up with sherry. the sherry for about a year and then they would drain everything down to probably about a liter of the sherry in there and then they would send it over just to keep the barrel hydrated and stuff like that so not we weren't necessarily just going and asking you know our used barrel guy hey do you have anything interesting it was very intentional with we want to incorporate this type of stuff but like anything that would like we want to be able to tell a story about We kind of work from the ground up with it. So yes, we did work with a Cooper over in Spain and he made these barrels for us. We didn't just go after Pedro Jimenez. We've used Pedro Jimenez. We've used Oloroso. We have some of Monteado floating around. So there are different types and some of them are very, very powerful. Some of them are not as powerful, but also some of the whiskeys that we have in sherry barrels have spent their entire maturation cycle in that very fresh sherry barrel. So again, the same way with like peated whisky. the sherified berry, we call it sherified, those berries barrels that help sherry, they're very intense flavor components so it's kind of like using them as like kind of your salt and pepper so every year it's kind of been a mix of new used some sherry. That's kind of like the core of what we've used, but there's like little different deviations from that as well. clump them all in, and that way we can get all of our sherry barrels over here fresh, and then we can kind of just knock this campaign out all at once. Because it is a lot of hands-on work, and there's a lot of ways to kind of mess a few things up that'll severely affect the inventory after all those years.

Jake Lewellen: No, completely completely understand. So Scott, you have twenty three in your glass, right?

Scott - BourbonLens: I do.

Jake Lewellen: I feel like, you know, this is just so interesting. Like I feel like if you like coffee, you like will like the nose on this one like right off the bat. So Scott's my my recovering bar bar barista friend. so I always lean to him. So when I get coffee type notes, I always go to Scott.

Scott - BourbonLens: Mm.

Jake Lewellen: Like, so it's been a long time since I've I've drank these personally. So going back to this, like I get a lot of roasted coffee notes on this. And like if you have ever done a cupping of coffee, I think this would be the flavor profile you would love.

Scott - BourbonLens: Yeah. Yeah, I get a lot of coffee, like dark cocoa and then like a pop of citrus too, which is not too foreign for, you know, coffee notes either. A lot of like African coffees and things like that have like a pop of citrus. But this nose it just

Brian Sprance: I think.

Scott - BourbonLens: it's so inviting. It's like okay, th I get the nose, like I it just smells amazing. Now it's like now I just wanna dive in, you know, obviously I've done that, but That's what I like most about this. It's like it actually makes you a little bit curious about what type of whiskey it might be, because it doesn't really scream single malt. Like it's got a lot of barrel influence, like it it's got a lot of like roasty, toasty, like almost nutty notes. And then like that citrus. Like so it's kind of like a wave and like if you put this in front of me I'd be like, I I couldn't tell you what type of whiskey it is.

Brian Sprance: Yeah, so I think what you guys are,

Scott - BourbonLens: If if anything, you know.

Brian Sprance: yeah, when you're talking about kind of that roasty coffee flavor, I think that is a big piece of what we call malt number three, and that's the barley wine whiskey. So I find it so interesting because this recipe is like 3 % chocolate malt, 3 % chocolate malt in that batch that's then vatted with different whiskeys still has that much of a contribution to the flavor profile. So we also, as the years went by and we were making these whiskies, We were making more of, for example, this number three whiskey that is pretty predominant in the nose of this. So not only did we have all these blending whiskies that we could work with, we also will probably deconstruct this, if you will, over the years. Because this cocoa kind of roasted coffee note that you get plays very well in this whiskey, but it's also super, super good. on its own, so there will be the opportunity to kind of deconstruct these things. Also, this whiskey, when you drop water into it once, twice, three times, at least for us, it changes significantly. think a lot of people would not even know that there's peat, peated whiskey in this, but I and Brian all that you had. When I start adding water, I start tasting more of like the sherry components and I start tasting more of the peated components, like the smokiness and stuff like that. So, Brian.

Bryon Martin: You know, I completely agree with that and Scott also when you're tasting profiling notes. I think one of the fun things for us on this was that the whiskey number three, malt number three does have those big kind of cocoa coffee notes. And going into this, kind of thought that Maris Otter was going to be much more of a base malt for us, know, kind of blending in there to kind of bolster some of the brightness. And we thought the malt number four, the Belgian Quad, was going to be a little more of a powerful piece of this profile. And it kind of turned out to be the end where I think Brian Sprantz mentioned earlier on that Marasada just had these kind of really pungent melon, cucumber kind of grassy notes that almost remind you of actual like floor malting barley and know, in Islay or something like that, know, when the chips are just coming out that really green kind of floralness. And honestly, that we used fairly small amount of marasotter in this first blend because at the younger age that melon presented so much that it was kind of taking over the blend as it's aging the successive releases the older version of this it definitely mellows out where we use a higher percentage of that but I do get more of those notes when you do add the water to it those start to come back out a little bit for me as well. No bright melon on the back end to go with the smoke that develops with water.

Jake Lewellen: Yeah, I think one of the other things that I find interesting about this, like when you go to take a drink of it, there's like this grapefruit note that kind of comes through, right? So you're got these dark notes on the nose, and then there's this nice like fruit, like bitter fruit note that kind of cuts through all of that to give you the balance, right? Cause like I feel like people might think that's way too rich on the front end. And you think that like, hey, I'm gonna basically be drinking like Mexican hot chocolate type style. And then all of a sudden you get this like bright bitter melon grapefruit note that I think really kind of Kind of cuts it all in a really positive way. and that makes it like enjoyable, but it also gives you a twist on the palate because you're not expecting it, or I wasn't expecting it when I drank it. And then I'm like, like, hey, that's refreshing. Let me let me take another drink of this. Like, am I getting what I'm actually getting? So I think that's the fun thing, is it does have a lot of twists and turns, and then like adding a drop of water, but smelling the glass on the back end is an enjoyable experience, too.

Brian Sprance: Yeah, I think a lot of people kind of find it sacrilegious to say this, but I've had some amazing cocktails made at the Aquifer, which is our bar on the third floor of the distillery. They've done an incredible job crafting just delicious cocktails with this. We've had different penicillins made with the malt whiskey. We've started floating different kinds of whiskies on top of cocktails. And it doesn't seem like this is something that would like, you know, easily just kind of like kind of fold into a cocktail. But Catherine and her team are just They do such a good job of kind of like making balanced cocktails that they really do justice to the whiskey because they also want to have like the whiskey be identifiable so that people can actually taste the whiskey but also taste like, you know, kind of what that full experience of that cocktail is. So I was actually semi-surprised. I couldn't make a whiskey. I couldn't make a cocktail at home to save my life with this whiskey. So whenever I need one, I just come up here and have them whip up some magic for me. But... When you talk about kind of the citrusy notes, we thought, again, like what Brian was saying, this so-called Belgian quad style whiskey, that's the thing that's giving us kind of a soft citrus flavor profile to it? Okay, sure. It makes no sense. It's almost like it's inverted what you think should happen as to where we thought this other one was gonna be a base mold, and that would be a pretty big piece of the blend. But as the years have gone by, we've kind of taken the steering wheel, if you will, of this whiskey and we can kind of drive it this way or that way, just knowing that we have so many different types of whiskies and tests to work with. you know, again, if you haven't, highly recommend kind of honestly at times overwatering it because this is a lot to unpack and really the more water you add sometimes is really how you can kind of dissect this whiskey.

Scott - BourbonLens: Yeah. What's the proof on the two thousand twenty three?

Brian Sprance: 2023 is 113.8 proof.

Scott - BourbonLens: So these also share a low barrel entry proof of a hundred and ten?

Brian Sprance: Yep, if we're doing our job correctly, everything goes into the barrel at 110 and these were all in theory, barreled at 110.

Scott - BourbonLens: If if it didn't, it's not your fault. It's somebody somebody else's fault.

Brian Sprance: No, no, no, no, that's a really highly evaporated barrel. This must have been on the fifth floor type stuff. No, no, no, we always got the barrel entry right.

Scott - BourbonLens: But a lot a lot of the whiskies, do do you find that malt has a different angel share than some of your Ryze and your bourbons? Or is it a all just it's whiskey? If it goes in the Rick House on the top floor it's gonna see similar loss? Or how does that work?

Brian Sprance: you

Bryon Martin: I'd say the data is probably little bit skewed on that just because not much of this goes up to the top floors.

Scott - BourbonLens: Okay.

Bryon Martin: For the barrels that do fully make it to a blend, I'd say it probably does yield a bit more just because it is on the lower floors. But with some of these funky and a lot of funky shape sizes also a lot of being used already, we unfortunately do see a little more loss from like front barrel cracks or leaps in integrity there. So from an actual evaporation standpoint, we probably do have higher yields, but that's truly the function of where it is in the warehouse. It's not necessarily because it's malted barley.

Scott - BourbonLens: Gotcha. Jake

Brian Sprance: I'll also add these, these, the maturation curve on these, the, with bourbon and rye, we felt like, okay, that's what a one-year-old bourbon or rye should taste like. And you can kind of like, over the years, we've just been able to really identify kind of what that curve is as to where like some of these malt whiskies we've tasted at like four and five. And we're like, that does not taste like it's five or six years old. That tastes like it's two or three. It seems like a lot of these whiskies, at least half of them, probably take a good five or six years to really get a good grasp of where they're going to eventually head. The peated whiskey, it tastes like New Make at four years old, and then it kind of tastes

Scott - BourbonLens: Yeah.

Brian Sprance: like a rubber goggles at five years old. So some of these whiskies like, Concerning is not the word, but we have kept a pretty close eye on certain styles of these whiskeys, just knowing that the maturation curve isn't just kind of that straight like that. It's kind of like, mmm. and then it kind of starts to take off. So we never really like set out about developing this whiskey to have like a seven year age statement. We a needed to wait until we had enough barrels to build an actual blend to put out there. And when you start up and you make these five whiskies over 18 months, you know, one of these barrels is going to be 18 months younger than the other one. So you just kind of have to wait for everything to catch up. And that actually organically just taught us like kind of the maturation cycle of some of these whiskeys. that went into the blend.

Jake Lewellen: No, that that makes a ton of sense. And I've moved on to twenty-four because like always fun to compare twenty-three to twenty-four. Like, how does this change? And so twenty-four has dot five.11 dot seven, right? So we added another component to this little guy. and we upped the proof point on this, 114.5. still carried the aged at least seven years age statement on this. but this one is a lot different. Than the previous years. this one, you know, I think you know, maybe Campbelltown. I know y'all are big Spring Bank fans. Campbelltown will start to pay attention to this one a little bit. It's got some smokiness, it's got a little bit of earthiness to it, it's got you know, kind of that creaky creaky dungeness experience kind of going on with with this one. so how did adding that one additional component really change the the blend to this altogether?

Bryon Martin: I believe the change is really in the cask numbers. Is that correct in this one? I'm trying to remember if this was, it was either Madeira or Armagnac, I believe, was the change on this one. And that was probably only two or three casks. I think it was more just about the proportions. I think we went up a little bit on the pitted, what we call malt number five on the pitted grains. And we did a little more malt number one as well. which I think lends on that kind of front end a little more of the grassy brightness before it goes into a little more of the beauty stuff.

Brian Sprance: you Yeah, the extra barrel was the Madeira barrel, but also keep in mind that this blend, even though it has a seven year age statement, there's now nine year old whiskey in here. Obviously the age statement's got to represent the youngest whiskey that's in the blend, but some of this whiskey that's in the 24 release was probably in the 23 release, but it's sister barrel or two, just sat there and aged another year or so. So we're still working with some of the components of the first year's production, but with each passing year. we have more that comes of age. Meanwhile, some of the older stuff that we kept behind has continued to age out. So I think it's just kind of just it's a little more refined to us just because you're starting to get some of those more like older elegant whiskeys in them. But again, like this is kind of an exercise in what do we have to work with and we go through and we taste every single thing. And I think Brian would probably agree. The blending of 24 was substantially easier than 2023, but we still spent so much time on it because A, it's fun, but B, it's kind of like, again, this isn't the stuff that's going to like pay the bills, but this is, this is, think for us, like kind of a reputation builder of, you know. We can make bourbon, we can make rye. I think we do it very well, but we are also very well-versed in other styles of whiskey as well, because a lot of what jumped out of the malt whiskey program was stuff that's kind of Irish-inspired and kind of opened our eyes to using different kinds of, whether it's raw barley or using oats and things like that. There is the context, like if you historically look back at what some of the distillers in Ireland or Scotland in the day were using, we've kind of drawn inspiration off that. While I'm sure the sales and marketing team isn't exactly happy with what we're cooking up in the lab sometimes, we know it's gonna hopefully turn out to be something super exciting. just, again, this is just the evolution of kind of those initial five whiskies, and we don't blend to be consistent. we blend for quality and we thought it was important to put that code on it specifically just to show that this is going to change year to year. There's going to be different barrel types some years. There's going to be less whiskeys. Some years there'll be more whiskeys and it just that code gives us like all the room that we need to operate and especially knowing that we're kind of we're blending. We're blending to our taste preference. We don't have something in mind.

Scott - BourbonLens: Mm.

Brian Sprance: When we did the 23, we were pretty mindful of pushing it too far on that smoky kind of peated edge just because we didn't want people's first impression of this whiskey to come out as that's just a smoke bomb. So as the years go by, we have those kind of levers to kind of pull up and down whether we want it to be more sherry influenced, more grain influenced, or more smoky.

Scott - BourbonLens: It's it's interesting 'cause I I actually sat down with these whiskies last night, for s a small pour and tasted them in the reverse order that we're tasting them now. And so I started with the the this year's edition. And when I got to this one, the twenty twenty four, I noticed how much more spicy it was, at least to me on the palate. And now that I'm going the other way, it's way l less spicy like the spice influence really doesn't hit me. It's a lot more of like the wine characteristics that that are really pushing through the the fruitiness, like the red fruits and things like that. So maybe it's just my palate adjusting. but it is kinda interesting that I noted last night I was like very spicy, spicy heat, and then when I get to it today I'm like I don't really get that at all. So

Brian Sprance: Yeah, I think as the whiskey continues to get older, I think a lot of that spice is probably driven more from the wood than it is like grain-wise, just because A, they're older, some of this is sitting in new barrels, so you're gonna pick up more of that wood spice and some more of the vanillins and stuff the longer it sits in those new oak. Guys, I honestly don't know if I'd be able to sit down blindly and tell you, I could probably get a couple of them right. Maybe I would get them all right,

Scott - BourbonLens: Right.

Brian Sprance: but like, I've had people pour me single malts that we've made that I'm like, that's obviously this, and I've been completely wrong. They're all in the neighborhood of like, what kind of, you would expect from a single malt out of New Rift, but there are just kind of small variations year to year with them, so. There probably would have been a higher proportion of Sherry on this one. Who knows?

Scott - BourbonLens: Yeah. You guys really don't talk much about the the yeast strain. W is there much variation between the yeast strains that you're using for the different mash pills that you're distilling? On this one there's seven five different mash pills.

Brian Sprance: Yeah, speaking on the yeast, if we add the yeast added to the... the code, would be 01. So this kind of backs into like, we wanted to make whiskey in the Kentucky fashion. We wanted to look through that Kentucky

Scott - BourbonLens: Mm-hmm.

Brian Sprance: regimen and we're super happy with our house yeast. And we said, okay, well, let's not change really anything besides the actual recipe. So that gets into like sour mashing. The fermentation cycles

Scott - BourbonLens: Mm-hmm.

Brian Sprance: were all the same. We set them all at 68 and we let them free rise to 90. Most of them are probably 72 to 84 hour fermentations, but the yeast strain is something that I think is pretty identifiable in our bourbon and rye is like it's it doesn't shift wildly. Don't get me wrong, we've used a ton of different yeast strains on different

Scott - BourbonLens: Mm-hmm.

Brian Sprance: yeast, but we wanted to kind of tie in everything that we learned from kind of making bourbon and rye whiskey into the mold program. And again, when you throw so many new variables into like these these recipes, you got to get the thing fermented.

Scott - BourbonLens: Yeah,

Brian Sprance: We wanted to

Scott - BourbonLens: yeah.

Brian Sprance: work with something that we knew was tried and true. And we knew that we liked the flavor profile of the yeast in our more traditional whisky. So we did stick with that. And we have not used a different yeast strain in any of our malt whiskies. We thought about using some of the yeast that a lot of the distilleries over in the UK are using. But we just wanted to kind of stick with our water, our yeast strain that we make all of our traditional whiskies with and kind of let the malt be the story of the headline. if you will.

Scott - BourbonLens: So leave that to the brewers. Matching yeast with different types of

Brian Sprance: I wouldn't say necessarily leave it to the brewers. You can leave it to New Roof as well. mean, we've made... We've made rye whiskies with saison yeasts. We've made wheat whiskies with hefeweizen yeasts. We're not afraid of using the yeast and we actually have really enjoyed doing it. But we wanted to, because there's so many different wild variations of the cask types, the barley varieties, we wanted to kind of still keep that common thread of this is just our house yeast strain. And it's nothing proprietary. mean, it's a USW6.

Scott - BourbonLens: Yeah. Yeah.

Brian Sprance: It's not like we're hanging outside under apple trees hoping for something to happen. I mean, this is a very commercial yeast that a lot of distilleries use. that we've had a lot of success with. So we wanted to just, again, it's tried, true, it's proven. mean, kind of

Scott - BourbonLens: Yeah.

Brian Sprance: the terroir, the funk of the distillery is all set in. You know, the windows are open. We're utilizing open fermentation. So we are okay with a lot of those other kind of like outside influences kind of factoring into the flavor profile. But at the end of the day, we wanted to work with something that we knew was consistent and was going to do the

Scott - BourbonLens: Right.

Brian Sprance: job.

Scott - BourbonLens: Well and also when you have to wait six, seven, eight, ten years, you need to be consistent. You know, if if you're brewing beer and you can turn it around in much less time, it's it's okay. You don't have to wait and then say, shit. We've we really screwed this one up ten years later.

Brian Sprance: Yeah, it's a little easier at least back in my brewing days. You know, when you were, we were using a ton of different yeast strains, like if something didn't work out, that's okay. Sometimes things don't work out as in they weren't happy with the flavor profile of the finished beer or whatnot. You know, that's when you go back after a two or a three week brew cycle and you're like, all right, let's change this, this and this as to where we're like trying to figure out where this like kind of like. maturation cycle is and again if you go back like at five years we're like what are these doing we would have thrown yeast into the mix too I don't know I might have blown a gasket so

Scott - BourbonLens: I I get it. I get it.

Jake Lewellen: and but and Bobby wouldn't have been happy if he wouldn't been able to produce something out in the marketplace. Shout out Bobby. but moving

Brian Sprance: Yeah.

Jake Lewellen: on to 2025. here I'm I'm keeping the the tasting rolling here and making sure our livers are are working in in good good drive. This on the nose is probably the most like traditional Scotchish of the group, like from a flavor profile perspective. I would say this fits into the Highland category, is what I'm kind of thinking of from a flavor profile perspective. I'm I'm in my scotch era right now, guys. So I've been really, really diving in. and so, you know, to me on the nose, this is super approachable. I do love the sherry notes that you're getting right off the bat. This would be kind of sherry bomb-ish, like I think, on the nose. the more you kind of go back in and know that you do get the the difference of flavor profiles, you know, as you go in and try to look for when Ken gave you the direction, don't go make scotch, right? And then this is the last one you put out before Ken retires, right? you know, like To me this this I think would confuse some Scotch drinkers, like on the nose on this one. You know, one, I think that's awesome, something to be proud of. But two, like, how do you approach saying, Hey, Ken, this is our new single malt for the year?

Scott - BourbonLens: Are you suggesting that you that they forced him to retire? No.

Jake Lewellen: Ha ha ha.

Brian Sprance: How do I present Ken with a new whiskey? I kind of just walk up, skipping and hopping and jumping with a big smile on my face and go, and he goes, do you like it? I'm like, I love it. He goes, well then I like it and I love it. He's the first one to tell you. And I don't agree with him, but he's like, I don't have the palette that you guys have and I can't pick out all of these things. I know what I know what I like and I like this. So again, like it sounds crazy, but like he really hasn't like given us input good or bad on direction of any of these whiskies really. I mean, we've we've had the freedom to do kind of whatever we want. So again, when you look at the 25 release, I think this is the first year that we actually. parted down and there's only three whiskies in this one now. So maybe that's more of like kind of a focus and maybe that's something that's more like kind of relatable as to where like you can kind of like glimpse through the window and say that's kind of identifiable as scotch but I think this is probably a little bit more of a cohesive blend that's a little bit easier to understand and I think probably the starting line for that stuff is just it's three whiskies that we worked with.

Bryon Martin: I agree, since we paired it down to three, which was the malt number one, the Maris Otter, malt three, the barley wine style, and then malt five, the peated. And we did up both the peat and the sherry a bit in this too, so I can see how that could lend it towards some more of those traditional scots and single malt notes as well. But yeah, it really kind of simplified it. And we... weren't 100 % sure going into it, knowing that essentially a third of the blend was going to be that malt number one that in previous years had presented semi-aggressively with that melanin and cucumber and whatnot. But this time with the extra age, is, know, Brian talked about the aging curve on this. This is where we found out that malt number one, once it hits nine, 10 years, really kind of plateaus out and some of the older Maris Otter barrels really just didn't present that same, you know, overpowering notes as it had the previous blend. So we were very happy with the fact that simplifying the blend actually created just as many wonderful flavors.

Scott - BourbonLens: I would say Jake I

Jake Lewellen: You've simplified the blend, but you also added some proof points on this one. So this one goes up to hundred and fifteen point two. So you've slowly said, Hey, let's punch you in the chest a little bit more every year.

Bryon Martin: I think some of that probably is just a function of the AIDS, but yeah, we're happy with it.

Scott - BourbonLens: Jake, I would agree like you said that it would confuse some Scotch drinkers. I would say yes, except for like the barrel influence. I feel like it has some of those richer, like it's been aged in Kentucky, barrel notes, you know. Like obviously the color the color on all these is incredible. it's not pale yellow and is something that doesn't really appeal to me about scotch, but like these are

Brian Sprance: Yeah, we

Scott - BourbonLens: all like they look like rich whiskies and makes me want to dive in.

Brian Sprance: We're also helped out by some of the sherry, sherified barrels that are coming out. They look like sherry. So, you know.

Jake Lewellen: Well, and th this one's got that fortified wine like note to it, right? Like it's kinda all through there, whether it's on the the peated that's there, but it's not like medicinal band-aid peat. Again, like I think Ural's peat profile is more Campbelltown Highlands, you know, kinda type of peat versus like, Hey, here's some some iodine, like go sniff that band aid.

Brian Sprance: Yeah, I mean.

Bryon Martin: Yeah.

Scott - BourbonLens: Gotta admit, I have no idea what you're talking about with these regions, but I'll go with it.

Brian Sprance: time and a place for all those flavor profiles, again, like, while we were cognizant of we want this whiskey to be digestible, maybe it's not the right word, but we didn't want to just start by blowing everyone's palate out and giving them this kind of convoluted version of what's kind of coming out of New Earth. So we've tried to keep balance in mind because, you know. Convincing Ken that we wanted to use a hundred percent peated malt that sure does sound like you're trying to make scotch and we very well could have just we have a pot still we could have made This hundred percent peated malt and we could have put it on the still and we could have put heads and tails cuts on it and we could have put it into lighter barrels But it was just a function of working with the equipment. We wanted to use the beer still we wanted to use the doubler we wanted to sour mash everything and You I think that's why we were able in the end to kind of create something that's kind of uniquely us and Hopefully it's pretty identifiable as this is a whiskey that comes out of New Rift, even though it is a single malt whiskey. It's big, it's structured. Yeah, I think it's pretty representative styles of whiskey that we make.

Jake Lewellen: I really enjoy this one. I I I find it to be like kind of more in my wheelhouse. I think the other two are uniquer blends. but this kind of is like I think the simplified mash bill or vatted bill of this is Streamlined, right? And so that leads us to, you know, hey, we've got three years under our belt. I always say it takes three years to create a baseline. Year four is when you hit your stride. That's what I think about in life in general. that's why seniors are better than freshmen. so

Brian Sprance: Yeah

Jake Lewellen: this one, I'm gonna be honest with you, haven't drank it yet. I set this sample aside when the team said, Hey, we're gonna do this. So going in cold, Scott's already tried it. And I don't have any of the details on this one, so I'm really flying blind. Tell us what sets up twenty six and how is it unique compared to twenty five, twenty four, and twenty-three?

Bryon Martin: I would say the big difference is we added the 6th malt, we call SMP6, which is Chevalier. Again, a more traditional, historically used malt in Scottish production. we had to wait until it had come of age, at least seven years. So we were making this a long time ago, but this was the first time it came of age and we were able to use it in the blend. I really think it added kind of a... leans much more towards a traditional Scotch single malt flavor profile. But I think it really brings all these flavors together and kind of like softens, rounds them out and really unites them all. So I don't know that it adds tons of flavor itself, but I really like how it brought the rest of the flavors and the rest of the pieces together.

Brian Sprance: Yeah, as we were as we were tasting some of these whiskeys the last couple of years, we were always pulling a couple samples of the chevalier and when that like started getting to about four and five and six years old, we were super excited to start working with it. There wasn't a ton of it because this is another thing that we made one of. So we had maybe 15 barrels coming of age that we knew that we could work with. But again, like if you look to like the years after that where we doubled and tripled production of stuff like chevalier or Golden Promise based off of what we knew we liked to blend. with you know we were just the production schedule is more informed the blending process is a little more informed as well you know it's interesting to me to kind of look at these side by side because we just went from we have kind of like focused in and it seems like three whiskeys kind of really put together and we were like how about six

Jake Lewellen: You know, the more the merrier, right? Like if we're we're all family at this point. It's like let's mingle all together. We've all we've all hit twenty-one. We can go out and we can all gamble together and see what we can can do to create the the best blend. Scott, you you've had a second time with these. so what do you think of of this one, this this latest release?

Scott - BourbonLens: I think this is my favorite one, even on the second visit. And I'm just wondering if it's because it's a little bit older and more mature and, you know, maybe that's part of it. But I feel like this one is just so much more well-rounded and drinkable. I mean, not that any of them weren't drinkable, but this one, this whiskey just feels chewy. It feels like more viscous. just feels a little bit more elevated. And like even on the nose, I'm thinking it smells like roasted marshmallows and it's like makes me want to just dive in and have another sip.

Jake Lewellen: Well no

Brian Sprance: Yeah, you know, this was experience that was kind of helping us along the way of building this blend. Also within the, Brian, correct me I'm wrong. I don't know if we did it the first year, but we definitely have for the last couple of years of when we were happy with what the gauge tank was blend wise flavor profile, we actually were taking these batches and then putting them all back into new or sorry, used bourbon and rye.

Scott - BourbonLens: Mm-hmm.

Brian Sprance: And they were just kind of marrying them for what, a couple months, three months,

Bryon Martin: few months.

Brian Sprance: three months.

Scott - BourbonLens: as opposed to like stainless or something like that it's just like a blending.

Brian Sprance: Yeah, like year one was stainless. Year two might have been, but the last couple of years, we've really tried to say, also as a young company, we've gotten better at setting timelines and deadlines for this is like, we actually have like package dates and release dates and all this stuff

Scott - BourbonLens: Right.

Brian Sprance: that goes into releasing a whiskey. So we actually have like kind of like that runway to saying, all right. All of our whiskey is of the age that we want it to and we just get to blending and the minute that we are 100 % settled on what the blend that we're all happy with the blend, then we just race around and try to get it all back into a used oak and the majority of the majority of it is probably bourbon, but it's all kind of married together in our old bourbon and rye barrels and could be some four year old, six year old could be eight. It's just a mix of probably whatever we have on hand. But honestly, we that's another thing that we just stole from Scotland and probably Ireland for

Scott - BourbonLens: Right.

Brian Sprance: the matter of like the whole idea of marrying is to where, you know, even when we're dumping something like a standard like bourbon. You just dump it and you pull a sample off of you're like, man, that is, that is a lot as to where if you like, you let it just kind of hang out and

Bryon Martin: See you.

Brian Sprance: settle down if you will, a couple of days, a week, whatever it takes. There is small little noticeable changes at least, at least for us. So I think that might also be kind of like what we're tasting in the 26 release. And Scott, think.

Scott - BourbonLens: Yeah.

Brian Sprance: 26 was probably, least taste panel wise, this has been our favorite blend so far. And I think this might be the smokier of the releases that we put out as well. It doesn't seem like this is 18 % of this peated whiskey, but it is. But I think it's still there and it folds into a balance.

Scott - BourbonLens: Yeah, but for the people that don't really care for smoke, I don't feel like it's overwhelming. It's like a characteristic of a roasted marshmallow or something like it. It kind of comes with the additional flavors. But as with anything, if you've been doing this for 10, 15 years, you get better at it. But this sliver of the single malt path, the fourth one, should be the best. It should get better every year. So I'm not surprised that it's my favorite. But it just feels well-rounded, robust, all around. Just more my speed, yeah.

Brian Sprance: I appreciate that. I mean, when we put out our four year old bourbon for the first time, people were like, I can't believe how good it tastes for four years old. I kind of like went home and I was like, my gosh. because we've gotten better and better and better at making whiskey. People were very impressed with what our four-year-old whiskey tastes like, and that was the stuff of we were figuring out how our equipment works and why is our boiler dying and why do we work 75

Scott - BourbonLens: Right.

Brian Sprance: hours a week? I'm tired. We've gotten better. The equipment's more consistent. We've just gotten better as a distillery. So I think that's showcased a lot in just our older releases, our 10-year-old.

Scott - BourbonLens: Mm-hmm.

Brian Sprance: specifically to this malt whiskey as well.

Scott - BourbonLens: and I think Jake and I both share this. like, when your Bottled and Bond originally came out, we're like, it's good whiskey. It's like, we can't wait to see it get older too. Like that is, like, I want to see this at six, seven, eight year, 10 year, obviously now. So it's like, we can't wait to see it even get better. But it's like to know that

Brian Sprance: Yeah, I take it.

Scott - BourbonLens: that's what's going into it. Yeah.

Brian Sprance: I've taken that journey with you, Scott. People are like, this is really good. I can't wait for it to get older. I'm like, yeah, me either.

Bryon Martin: Let's do.

Scott - BourbonLens: Hahaha Yeah.

Jake Lewellen: But I mean I think that's the the the best evolution of you all has been okay, you have your bottom and bond rod bourbon and you have your single your single barrel like that are readily available. But also you have your eight year that is now becoming more of a thing, right? Like in the marketplace. And it's it's you all are willing to say, hey, consumer, we hear you, we understand you, we are we we want that whiskey to to be there too. and I think that's the the best thing. And I and you know when we when we look at like the whole landscape of of bourbon whiskey, New Riff, like I think punches above its weight class, me personally. if I'm going to northern Kentucky and there's one place to go, like always go to New Riff. One, because the the bar is just excellent, but also the the whiskey is is really good. Like, and so I think you all have have carved out your your spot and continue to to sh to fight for for elbow room at the bar because you're you all are putting out fun products and the fun products are not just fun anymore, they're also really, really good. and whether it's you know the the sherry malted rye whiskey or you know keep doing what you're doing and have fun with these things because this is this is awesome and I'm here for it. Whenever you all do the deconstructed one and you do like here's here's the release, like here's the the three seven fives of all the ones and the big bottle. I've just Bobby, I'm here.

Scott - BourbonLens: He he.

Jake Lewellen: We're here, we'll we'll be there with bells on.

Brian Sprance: Yeah, I think we've got a practice run on how we're deconstructing things. Because again, we always kind of envision doing that with this whiskey. But this latest headliner, it's only three whiskeys. We'll do

Scott - BourbonLens: Ahem.

Brian Sprance: that and those will be available for an event that we're doing where people can taste the different components of that specific blend. And I think that could also translate probably pretty fun, pretty well into kind of... this whiskey as well, just because there's so many things going on. somebody tried like. an eight year old sherry finished, like it's spent its entire eight years in a sherry barrel, you guys would probably be like, I don't even know how to begin to work with this because that's exactly what we looked at each other and said. We also said like probably after the third year of blending, like looking at our inventory, we probably don't need to make any more sherified whiskey for a while. We probably don't need to make peated whiskey again for a while because they're very, very flavorful components of what that blend is. You're

Scott - BourbonLens: Mm-hmm.

Brian Sprance: using sparingly, so. when you don't use that much of this whiskey, but the other style of whiskey becomes a bigger one, it kind of tells you itself what you have available for building each of your blends.

Scott - BourbonLens: So I figured out why this 2026 might be one of my favorites too. It seems like the proof point came down a little bit.

Bryon Martin: don't love you seven yet.

Scott - BourbonLens: 111 would what did you say the highest one was like 115 116 I

Bryon Martin: Yeah.

Scott - BourbonLens: Mean we're talking like slight variations, but it's just like I feel like the proof and a little bit lower proof more mellow it's How do people get the 2026 Sing-A-Mall?

Brian Sprance: It's pretty much entered all of our normal distribution channels. You know, we're available in all 50 states. I couldn't tell you of all the 50 states that the Malt whiskey went to, but probably the most surefire way of ever getting it is through the gift shop. But again, this was not like a small release. So I would assume that probably most accounts wherever they are, that they're kind of like. into what we've been doing for the past seven or eight years whiskey

Bryon Martin: and welcome to the class.

Brian Sprance: release wise. They might be able to get it and you can also order it online through our our pages through our web page. Yeah.

Bryon Martin: You can also put down strong, not doing it wrong.

Scott - BourbonLens: Yep.

Brian Sprance: we've

Scott - BourbonLens: I mean that.

Brian Sprance: tried to be very intentional with our price points and understanding that we never want to be the brand that was like, here's a $500 bottle. We wanted to sell whiskey and we wanted people to be able to enjoy it at a reasonable price point. Yes, we still obviously have tons of bills to pay, but we just wanted to make everything kind of priced appropriately to what we think we would pay.

Jake Lewellen: Yeah. No. Well, keep doing what you're doing. really appreciate you all taking some time to walk through the single malts and talk about those. this is this is really fun. keep doing what you're doing and we're excited to to hear what 2027 has in store for us. So Brian and Brian, have a great weekend. Everyone, thanks for listening to this episode of the Bourbon Lens. We'll catch you next time. Cheers.

Scott - BourbonLens: Cheers, gentlemen.

Brian Sprance: Thank you.

Bryon Martin: Thank you. Bye, gentlemen.

Scott - BourbonLens: Thanks a lot.