Want more interview time? Well, make sure to enjoy this interview as a member of the Whiskey Lores Speak Easy. Alster and I will be chatting about how he and 4th-sized of Scotland crafted their pot stills for not only the Colorado Mountains, but also America's Char-Doke Barrels, and also what they learned from Belkoni's Pottsdale Design. Get a free seven-day preview and check out all the other long-form commercial-free interviews, get access to my Whiskey Lores Archives, and also be a part of our next Thursday Dram Sharing Party.
It's all at patreon.com slash whiskey-lores. Welcome to Whiskey Lores Whiskey Flights, your weekly home for discovering great craft distillery experiences around the globe. I've been a travel guide to your hanish, the best-selling author of experience in Kentucky Bourbon's 2nd edition, The Lost History of Tennessee Whiskey, the new book that busts 24 of Whiskey's biggest bits? Whiskey Lores Volume 1.
At the same time as the Great 48 tour has it quite worked out the way that I planned it, well, I mean, the original goal was to be on state number 36 by this episode, and I was going to be starting my western state finale. Well, it appears that I'm going to start my western state finale, but I only really made 17 states so far, so the next 11 distilleries will get me over the halfway mark, and over the next couple of months, maybe I'll get a chance to actually knock out more of the states, but all 48 is going to be a little bit tough to handle this year. One of the things that has been going on with me is trying to craft a new book called Experiencing American Whiskey, which I'm working on, but I've also been working on some podcast ideas, and so part of this trip out west started at a podcast convention where I was trying to pick up a few tips and tricks, and one of the themes this year was about you need to be doing video because even though people like podcasts in audio format, they usually find you through video. So I have avoided video for a long time, and I think part of the reason for that is because of the production time.
It's not that I don't enjoy making videos, I do. It's just it takes a lot of time to do so, and I keep trying to find ways to optimize my time. It's part of the reason why I love when people join my Patreon because the more financial help I get, the more I'm able to create more content, more unique content, and hand out some of the more time consuming elements to a third party. So one of the projects I have for this fall is to start a new video series called Truth or Lore, which I will also be sharing the audio of here on the Whiskey Lord podcast.
They tuned for that. Meanwhile, after going to the podcast convention in Dallas, it's time to board a flight and head to Denver, and this is where I'm going to be kicking off this western swing. And I got a call from Christopher Davis, who was putting together a whiskey festival at the Hotel Polaris in the shadow of the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, and it was going to be an evening event on a Friday night. I was flying in Thursday night, so I thought, well, why don't I squeeze in a Denver area distillery to start off the great 48 on this particular swing and talk about an embarrassment of riches.
I've been to a lot of these distilleries, laws, strand of hands, Leopold brothers, Tal Nua. So where was I going to go? Well, I've had a lot of these distilleries already on the podcast, but the one place that I went to that I thoroughly enjoyed, where I haven't introduced you to the founder, is Boulder Spirits and founder, Alistair Brogan. He's great to chat with.
He's from Scotland. We're going to learn more about him during our conversation here. The first time I was there, I was just amazed at the quality of the spirits that they were making, learning about their water source and also seeing their one foresight pot still and learning about how he goes about utilizing that one pot still to double distill his spirits. And so this time I wanted to dive in a little bit more into his background and also about the spirits that he's making.
And so we're sitting at the bar in the distillery and jump right into our conversation. So Alistair, first, let's kick things off by finding out a little bit more about where it's going you came from. So I was brought up in a place called Motherwell, and Motherwell was known for a soccer team and for a big steelworks, huge steelworks called Dreams Creek in Motherwell. So I was brought up there, we're about 10 miles south of Glasgow, as I referenced the point, went to school in Glasgow, went to university in Glasgow as well.
So what was it that got you to say I'm interested in moving to America? Well I came out to school, joined the military, was in the military for 10 years, went into a business for about 15 years field distribution, oil and gas interesting, that's again distilling, but I never looked at it that way. And then when I was about, let me think now how long ago, when I was about 40, I got married in America. And she originally was from Pennsylvania, laterally Florida, and then I sold my business unexpectedly in 2009.
We'd be married for a few years and I one day turned around and said, hey, you know, we could actually move to America for a period of time. And within nine months of making that suggestion early in our marriage, we were living here. So it was a massive move, nine months. So we came over, we looked at a map of America, now I'd been to America quite a few times, a couple of dozen times, looked at a map of America and literally just completely said no to north, as I was too cold, completely said no to the south because it was too hot.
And this coast was too crowded, east coast, hurricanes, tornadoes. And my wife actually said, I don't know if we would do well in Boston, they're very, very smart in Boston. And she regrets everything that. I still give her a hard time about that.
But when you call her, I'd been to call her out too many times, she had been a couple of times. We packed the kids up, one year old and three year old, we came across to Boulder because we'd heard of Boulder and we'd done research, spent a month in Boulder, loved it, absolutely loved it. Before we had left, I'd put an offer in the house and then we went back, I then had to apply for my residency, which is very easy, as long as you don't have a felony and you've been married at least two years. And then we moved across and that's 13 years now.
Wow. Were you thinking, whiskey, when you came over? You know, I was thinking what I went to do for the third part of my life as in the third career, third part of my life, so I'm now 57. And I did a lot of research.
I'd read several friends who were a master of the scholars in Scotland, listened to them, researched it, researched it, went to Forsyth's, spent time with Richard Forsyth, purchased a still, it was a three-year waiting list at the time. It was boom time for them. Bought the still, put my name down and then started doing more research. So this was meant to be a hobby.
I was going to come in, I was going to find a location, start laying down whiskey and really do it as a hobby because I was doing consultancy for a law firm in family business resolutions. And I was going to transfer and come over here and try and do that here, but that takes time, takes a lot of time to build that up. So as soon as I started laying down whiskey, it was full time. So I was sort of not exactly the plan I wanted, but a plan that came out well.
Yeah. Well, over in Scotland there, sometimes very critical of the size and style and dense in a pot still trying to find a particular flavor and style. Were you thinking through any of that stuff when you were picking out how to have a pot still made? Well, interestingly, when I spoke to Richard Forsyth, one of his first questions was, you bring in a consultant with you.
And I went, no, he says, thank God. He says, because all the consultants do is try to talk to justify their fee. And the reality is I'm going to design you a still that specifically going to give you a unique whiskey, first of all, because every pot still that's made will give you a unique whiskey. And it's almost impossible to recreate that.
So he said, we'll make you a pot still that's going to give you a unique whiskey, a great whiskey. Also, because you're in Colorado, he said, and because the rules at the time were new chardoke barrels, he said, I'm going to make you a pot still that's going to give you a reflux that is going to give you a heavier whiskey, a more oily whiskey. And he said, that's really what you're wanting. And he said, I was just, I have had one conversation at the time with about Coneys, the guys from about Coneys.
And he said, so I'm very familiar. And he actually brought about Coneys whiskey. And he said, there's not many people are doing whiskey, but he said, I know American whiskey. So I'll design you a pot still that's going to give you that little bit of more, sorry, less reflux, heavier whiskey, combat that new chardoke barrel.
Did you start with bourbon or did you start with American whiskey? So we started with single malt immediately. And I thought going by what I expected, I thought I'd be able to turn more and more people into American single malt whiskey. But I realized very quickly I had to do bourbon.
And the bourbon was essential because to be honest, Americans are doing bourbon. That's what they were brought up with. I was brought up with single malt whiskey. Americans are brought up with bourbon.
So I had to do bourbon. So I was maybe about six months, eight months after I was doing single malt whiskey, the realization to hold started going down bourbon. And to be honest, bourbon is 50% over sales. So it's 50, 50.
Although we promote single malt, more than we promote bourbon, it's 50, 50 as far as the sales are concerned. But I want you to do a bourbon that was dramatically different. This is the great thing about crafty stories. They take a lot of risk without maybe seeing economic viability of things.
And sometimes a lot of times it's not blind. They know they're taking a risk, but it's worth it. So what we did was Americans don't use multi-barrows of flavoring. The bourbon's.
They might use 5% to, you know, it's very enzymatic. It helps break down the sugars and start it into sugars. So you've got high, wheaty bourbon's. You've got high rye bourbon's and the main flavors.
But not multi-barrow. And when I asked a lot of really eminent distillers, why don't you use what bourbon is a flavoring? Their answer to me is the same as Scottish distillaries give me. Is that's not how you do it?
Crafty distillaries can do things differently. We have got a bourbon that's 51% corn. Take a little bourbon. 44 multi-barrow.
Highs multi-barrow in the US. Okay. And nobody was doing this. And 5% rye.
And what that gives for me is a single malt whiskey drinker primarily. Is it Kamsa, Heat and Sweet and Kentucky hug you get from a high corn content. And it adds another dimension. That other dimension is a multi-ness.
So I got a lot of bourbon drinkers who really have never really drunk single malt will taste our bourbon and go, oh my goodness, what's that flavor? I said that's multi-barrow. Now taste our single malt whiskey. So you're bringing people onto that malt.
And as a result, and I'm proud of this, is that our cast strength single malt, sorry cast drink bourbon won the world's best small batch bourbon at the world whiskey's last year. But we can't make a huge amount. I think this year we're bringing out a thousand bottles. But yeah, and that's the fun side of the craft of stealing is that you can do these things.
And now I've just noticed some bourbon guys are now using 30% multi-barrowy. Yeah. 15% multi-barrowy. It's happening.
I'd like to think that I helped start that. The one I think of is Chattanooga. They make a high malt theirs. I think was really kind of born out of the fact that they had a brewer come in.
And I'm seeing a lot more of that where brewers are being brought in to turn into master distillers. And when you do that, they're going to have that experience. I think when I think about the people, a lot of the people who are running distillers in Colorado, I can always speak for Colorado. A lot of them have been, you just mentioned for example, the townua, the townua Patrick was a brewer originally, an end of the stiller, I believe.
So yeah, they bring a lot to the party because they are changing the yeast profiles. They give different flavors of changing the mash bills, the different flavors. Obviously not hops, but they're able to do those. Because that's the base of all, as I say to people, and they sign up and look at me in a weird way, at the end of the day, whiskey's on hope you're distill twice.
And people have got to take a second to talk and hold on, that's too simple. But it's that simple. It's on hope you're distill twice. Well, the other thing too, I remember on my first trip through Kentucky, I saw some hybrids distills, but not many.
And the larger guys are all using column stills. So in reality, you're taking bourbon back through the way it was made in the early 1800s, if you're going to be putting it on a pot still. Do you find that you're getting a lot of interesting flavors? You probably, because you have so much malt in it, you're going to have some of that Scotch experience in making cuts in what you're getting topped about in the hearts.
Or do you find it the same with your bourbon that you want to take wide cuts on it? Or do you feel like you need to narrow them down because it's more corn? And we do the cuts the same. Yeah, okay.
We do the cuts the same because of that incredibly high multi-barrel content. We do the cuts the same. We also do, we do a petitur whiskey as well. What you tend to find is that the cuts for petitur whiskey, the way that tails cut and so on.
We do the cuts exactly the same. Okay. Because again, I think I said to you earlier, in Scotland, every penny is a prisoner. So they try and squeeze every single last thing out.
And so in Kentucky as well, I think with craft is snowing, we've got a little bit more to play with. So I'm cutting very early for petitur whiskey. I don't want a heavy petitur whiskey. And I'm cutting some of the latter flavors off that peat, which I think is proven good because a petit mole has come out really, really well.
It's more of an expression of peat rather than a peat mole. Okay. The other thing that you deal with, you're probably more than definitely more than they're going to deal with in Kentucky is, again, pressure. How did you find things aging in the barrels here?
And is there a way that you can protect it from over aging? And you were probably starting with charred barrels. Are you still on charred barrels? We are.
So we use a charred number three. Okay. And we first started off, there is an element that you pick your char and you try and stick to it. Although we now have got a combination of char number two and number three.
Because we now feel as though we can do that sort of blending, there is a subtle difference. There's a little bit more oakiness on the char three. The sugars come out a little bit different. But one of the most fascinating things about, I think, America and America distilling is all the microclimates that you have.
And the microclimates going from incredibly dry to very humid, but cold-tumid and hot-tumid and different altitudes. So there's two things that Colorado specifically gives whiskey. The first thing is our English here is huge. We are losing four or four and a half percent per annum.
We just emptied a few Kentucky barrels. They're 17 years old. They were around about the 3%. Whereas in Scotland, it's less than 2% that they are due.
Because the barrels are breathing at such a rate because of the swings in temperature day and night, summer, winter. And that is just sucking the new mix of it into that spongy char filter and pushing it out in a warming rate here in Colorado. That's the first thing. The second thing impact is the dryness.
And the dryness, then what happens is it pulls those water particles out at a different rate or a different proportion than the ethanol particles. So again, go back to Scotland. You'll put it in at 125 and it goes down. You put it in, again, those barrels that we just 17 years from Kentucky, 120 went up to 131.
We've just emptied a barrel that we put in at 120 years ago and it's at 165. Wow. It's now higher than what we distilled at. And you can't take it in a plane because it hasn't.
So 165. That's the highest we've hit. And we put it at 120. What you do find is all the Colorado distilleries are starting to put them in a war 115, 110.
Does it make a massive difference? You need more barrels if you're putting it in at that. But we also find some of the distilleries in Colorado and we are one of them is maybe after four or five years. We just put a little bit of water in it.
We just proof it down. Because if you're getting so low, there's so much heat in that barrel that you might, there's almost an acceleration of that loss. So by adding a little bit of water, we have found that it helps a lot. You said you got a barrel that's coming in near 10 years now.
How is it doing in terms of, is it, I'm sure more than half of it is evaporated by now? Yes. So we're going to be 10 years, our first 10 years is going to come out in about seven or eight months. And yes, we've lost a lot of it.
And the danger again, as I said, we were talking about having a still with the issue of Fox heavy or whiskey. The danger was always when we started this is that we're going to get too okay as a scotch whiskey drinker. Everything's too okay to me. So I've had to learn over those 10 years, you know, to go past that okayness and really see that the depth of the whiskey underneath that because it still is okay to me.
I give it to a lot of people. I've got a lot of samplers who I'll take it, you're trusted to people or take it and say, how's this doing? How's this doing? And they'll tell me because they're being bourbon drinkers all their lives.
They'll go, no, you're fine. So 10 years is probably 10, 11 years is probably we're going to get to. If we're going to probably run out anyway or if I whiskey at that age, but also it might just be too okay. Now, some people will put it in torts, you know, they'll take out the bottle of that.
Some people might put it in your conditioning. So climate control a little bit just to slow things down. Well, if like me, you didn't get a chance to go to the Kentucky Bourbon Festival this month, you can still get to Kentucky and I can help you plan out the perfect trip. Grab a copy of my newly updated and expanded edition of Whiskey Lore's Travel Guide to Experience in Kentucky Bourbon.
I will give you 44 profiles of the great distilleries that I visited and give you my own personal experience. Let's tell you what I tasted, side trips you might want to plan around trips to these distilleries and insider things that you'll want to take note of while you're at the experience. I'll also give you advice on how to handle your tastings. I'll give you the real history of Kentucky Bourbon without all the lore.
I'll toss in a little lore though as well. And it's all available in Whiskey Lore's Travel Guide to Experience in Kentucky Bourbon. If you want to get a signed copy of it, you can do so if you're in the US at whiskeylore.org slash shop and that comes along with free shipping. That's whiskeylore.org slash shop.
You've been here for a while and you've got friends back in Scotland, I'm sure if they sampled it and what kind of responses have you gotten? So one of my proudest moments was we started getting distributed in Scotland and I went over and went to the Mveruri Whiskey Club, tasting events, Glasgow Edinburgh. And I was pretty nervous because they didn't expect a Scottish accent, a guy coming over from America. And so it made for fantastic conversations.
But I think when you're a whiskey lover, I think you want to experience everything. And I think you want to be able to try everything. And they don't really, you know, the Scots have moved away from this. Scotland's got the best whiskey in the world.
Because whiskey, whether it be, you know, Tasmania or Japan, there's phenomenal whiskey. So the real whiskey guys wanted to taste new experiences. We're distributing Kentucky as well, a very small way. And again, I went down there and gave the whiskey guys that wanted to taste that.
And again, they were very accommodating. They wanted to taste new whiskey. And if you listen to some of the social media guys now, they're realizing that there's some phenomenal whiskeys that are outside Kentucky. And Kentucky guys know that as well.
It's not, we're better. It's, we're different. You're different. Yeah.
This has always been my thing, is really trying to get people to stretch beyond and see. Partially, I did it because I wanted to understand the history of other countries and their whiskeys for me to be able to tell America's story. Because you can't really know the American story unless you know the Irish story, the Scottish story, as well as the German story and the rye grain coming over. And you know, I mean, all of these different areas have had influence on what happens here.
So it's good to see that it is growing that way. You took on the name Chieftain. Where does that come from? Do you know, it was a little bit of a tongue-in-cheek name.
I gave it to myself because, and I'm going to be rude about Americans. And I'm going to be rude about Americans. I'm known American citizen. But as my wife says, it's all right to be rude about Americans, but not in a Scottish accent.
So I love the way Americans love their titles. Vice President, Acting Vice President, Vice President of this. So I just thought, I'm going to give myself a title. So I gave myself a title of Chieftain.
But I get asked that quite frequently. But it was tongue-in-cheek to Americans. What's the title? Nice.
So you're expanding. The whiskey is out to more states, which is great. But also you've got a new experience here in Boulder. Yeah.
So we've got our tasting room here, which is not far from the center of Boulder. Where we do tastings, we do tours, we do private events, etc. But we just opened our, in Colorado, every state is different. We're allowed to have a secondary tasting room.
So now we've opened a secondary tasting room on Pearl Street, which is the main thoroughfare of Boulder. Really, really busy. Very small, 500 square feet. But it's for people to come in and get free samples of our whiskey.
They can buy a bottle. They can talk whiskey to us about our brand, about what we do, and how we do it. We can only sell what we physically make in Colorado. So it really does focus the mind on just our whiskey, which is great.
And we only opened that 10, 11 months, but already, you know, Boulder gets a lot of out of town people. So it's spreading that word, which is great. And 20, 25% of our customers are repeat business. So it's snowballing a bit, which is fantastic.
And I love working in there. Beautiful. Well, and you still do tours here? Yeah, we do tours, private tours.
We do organized tours in 30, 30 Saturdays, or whenever we people want as a group. And we love just talking about whiskey, talking about our brand. But, you know, the conversation always goes to what people enjoy, what other whiskeys they are. And you know, you're a history buff on whiskey is people are interested in history.
They're interested in why is bourbon. I thought we get people from Kentucky telling me that we can't make bourbon here. We're not going to. They like to know about the history and the story.
And also the people behind the brands and what we're doing. For people who are planning a trip out in this direction and maybe they want to pair something along with, I mean, I don't know if you had the same experience the first time I came to Denver, I drove across the country. So I came to Kansas, which is flat as can be. Yeah.
And I kept waiting for the mountains to show up. And I'm like an hour from Denver and I'm going, where are the mountains? Where are the mountains? They are here.
You are right on the edge of them. So I'm sure there's plenty of stuff to do with Rocky Mountain, National Park and the rest. But what kind of things would you kind of point out to people might be fun to check out? So Colorado is known for skiing, it's mountaineering.
Boulder specifically, we are right at the foot house. So there's some great hiking, not 14,000 foot hikes, but there's some great intermediate and low level hikes here. They're skiing within 45 minutes a year at El Dorado. We have got a real phenomenal brewing scene actually here.
If you want to move away from the whiskey, there's some great beers. The food is good here. I coming from Scotland, which can be quite bland. You can't get haggis here, I guess.
Yeah, absolutely. And you can't get fat chips. It's always good chips. But yeah, it's an outdoor paradise, but also there's a lot of other things to do.
We've got the Stanley Hotel, the inspiration of the shining within 45 minutes of here, which is in Crig. They've got a phenomenal whiskey vault down there for whiskey lovers. So there's a lot to do. And actually, a year and a half time, we're now going to be the base for the Sundance Festival, which has come away from Park City in Utah.
And so this place will be film city for a couple of weeks every year. So there's a lot going on in Boulder and in Colorado is a wider area. Well, I've been here twice in both times. We've just gotten into big conversations that people don't get to hear because I don't hit the record button until later.
But always appreciate the hospitality here. And I love your whiskeys. I took home a bottle of your Peaded the last time. And it was the one that whenever my friends would come over and say, Oh, American scotch is the way to go.
I'd let them taste it and they go, oh, this is really good. And that's what it's about. It's getting people to taste you. Sorry, American Singapore whiskey.
And you know, there's 150 of us now and we're pushing out this best. We can and get people to taste the whiskey. Alsar, thank you so much again. And I look forward to being here on my next visit.
Cheers. Absolutely pleasure. Thanks very much. I've enjoyed this trip to Boulder, Colorado and Boulder Spirits at the Vapor Distillery.
And don't forget that if you're looking for great distillery adventures anywhere across the globe, you can always find them at whiskeylord.org slash travel. Sign up for a free membership. They bookmark your favorite distilleries to add them to your wish list. And when it's time to solidify those plans, use the site's convenient planning tools, map, store dates, booking links and more to create the perfect distillery itinerary.
Start your journey at whiskeylord.org slash travel. As I make my way to Colorado Springs to tell the tales of the midst of whiskey, if you're still on the fence about to visit the Boulder Spirits, well, let me give you my three reasons why I think you should have this distillery on your whiskey lower wish list. First, Boulder is a gorgeous town, especially in the fall when the Aspen trees are yellow. It serves as the gateway to the Rockies and Boulder Spirits captures that boldness in a wonderful array of Whiskeys.
If you have a tribe bourbon with 44% malt in the mash bill, then this is the place. Second, you got two choices to interact with Boulder Spirits in Boulder, Colorado. You can take a tour and enjoy a dramat with the distillery or head to their new tasting room in town where you can get a complimentary sample of their spirits. And third, this is a great way to get a little touch of Scotland in the Rockies.
Not only can you admire the beautiful copper foresight potstills, but you can also sample peated and unpeaded single malts, and don't forget you could also be one of the first to taste a decade old Colorado whiskey. I hope you enjoyed this visit to Boulder Spirits. And after my trip to Colorado Springs, I'll be heading south to a bustling tourist town known as Santa Fe, New Mexico, where I'm going to be taking my first steps into sipping a spirit that was once outlawed is now making a strong comeback. Make sure you've got your ticket to ride along by smashing that subscribe button on your favorite podcast app.
Let me travel Guide Drew Hanish, and until next time, cheers and slánjà vá! The transcripts and travel information including maps, distillery planning information, and more at Twiskey-Lord.org slash flights. Whiskey-Lord's a production of Travel Fuel's Life, LLC.