BRC S2 E2 - The Busker at Royal Oak

Transcript: BRC S2 E2 - The Busker 

Kerry Moynahan:
It is five o'clock somewhere, and you've tuned in to season two, episode two of BRC. For those of you who'd like to watch this episode, I highly recommend it. We're live and in person on the Emerald Isle. You can view season two on our website, YouTube, and Spotify. Today, in our Tales from the Still segment, I speak with global brand ambassador, Woody Cain, about the Busker Irish Whiskey. Plus, he takes me on a tour of the Royal Oak Distillery in Ireland. Lastly, we taste through the Busker's core expressions. Like what you've seen on BRC? Want to see more? Experience more? And maybe even taste more? Then head over to our Ko-fi site and become a member of the Barrel Room Parlor. By choosing the Copper Level membership, you'll have exclusive access to videos related to topics discussed on the podcast and blog posts for members only. As an Amber member level, you'll enjoy everything from our Copper level as well as various spin-off series including The Cutting Room Floor and Kindred Spirits. In addition, the Amber membership includes exclusive discounts to live in-person events. To join, visit www.barrelroomchronicles.com and click on Become a Member in the navigation bar. or go straight to our Ko-fi site at ko-fi.com slash BRC and click on the membership link. Once you've joined, you'll have access to everything your chosen level has to offer. You'll even be able to participate with the show by commenting on videos and other posts. Don't wait, sign up today for exclusive content and event discounts in the Barrel Room Parlor. Woody Kane, it is so good to see you in person.

Woody Kane:
Look, it is fantastic to actually have you over here and stand on the grounds of Royal Oak Distillery. It's great to see you.

Kerry Moynahan:
It is great to see you. It's great to be here. I remember when you sent us the YouTube video that you did outside, I was like, oh my gosh, that property is beautiful. I have to get out there. It's so great. And it's even more beautiful in person.

Woody Kane:
It is.

Kerry Moynahan:
For those of you watching, whenever they do make a visitor center, which I hear is coming In the future.

Woody Kane:
In the future, we're looking at ideas.

Kerry Moynahan:
Then you should definitely check it out. Beautiful place. Just keep an ear out for the Visitor's Centre to happen. Speaking of the Visitor's Centre, when it does happen, tell us about this historical house right across here. Is that where it's going to be?

Woody Kane:
Sure. Yeah, look, we've got a beautiful house here in sight, Hollerton House. It's from 1755. It has some fantastic stories about it, great history, and it is loved by the people all around here. they really have a great connection to it because the British landlords that actually stayed in that house were very good to the families around here. So when it came time for the English to move out of Ireland, they remained and they were allowed to stay alongside of the people here because of the development of relationships that they built up. And it's a great way to have it because that's what whisky's about. It's about that relationship. So even back then, you had that lovely under thread of, hey, you know what? Something good's going to happen here.

Kerry Moynahan:
That's great. So today we have the four expressions that I had with you when we did the remote.

Woody Kane:
Yes, indeed. So the busker, we are unusual in the fact that we release all of the experience that you can get from Irish whiskey. So what you have here in front of you, you have your single grain, you have a single malt, and you have a single pot still. So they're the three main types that you're going to get from Irish whiskey. We are the only ones that actually make and release all three products with every single drop of liquid in those bottles right from this distillery and we offer it to the consumer. So it is a chance for you to experience the full traditional Irish feel coming from one single place.

Kerry Moynahan:
Okay, so tell me a little bit about the blend. How do you make that?

Woody Kane:
So the blend is, a lot of people would think making the blend, all I'm doing is taking the three of these, mixing them together out the back and just throwing it and saying, hey, here's a blend. But it's actually a lot more complicated than just taking grain, malt and pot from these bottles and putting them in. It is taking the components that go to create these and putting them together in a certain balance that will allow the best to shine through. So it is a fantastic product and it was John Ramsey and Niall Bulger who worked on the flavour profiling at the very start of this. And then we have, of course, Caroline Martin, who is here, and she is replicating this, and she is also then looking forward and seeing what else we're going to be bringing out in the future, which is something we're very excited about, as any distillery would be, which is great for everyone. With the blend here, we have your grain, your malt, your pot. We have less grain, more malt and pot in there. A lot of the blends you have out there will have a high concentration of grain and then a little bit of malt or pot still, depending on what whisky it is. But we tend to go less grain, more malt and pot so that we can really allow the quality and also those taste profiles to really, really shine through.

Kerry Moynahan:
Now when they blend it, do they blend the grains together before or after they make the whisky?

Woody Kane:
So what it is, is let's say, for instance, that in order to create this grain, we will use bourbon casks and we will use bourbon with a finish of Marsala. So when it comes to the blend, what we will do is we will take a portion of the bourbon only and a portion of the bourbon and Marsala together, and that will go together, but it will all be mixed in order to get a taste profile. I mean, people always ask me, you know, how do you do that? Like, is it like baking a cake? Okay, I don't know, but I know in Ireland, what we tend to do when we're baking a cake is you need two things in Ireland, and that is a grandmother and a wooden spoon, okay? Eating the grandmother is going to tell you how to do it, and a wooden spoon is to hit you if you don't get it right. So, if you make a cake, there you go. So, if you make a cake, what you're going to do is you're going to have a recipe, if you stick to that recipe 100%, you're going to end up with the same result every time. When it comes to whiskey, it's actually the opposite. You start with the cake. You start with that flavor profile that you're looking for. And the thing about the ingredients is they're going to change every single year because of maturation, because of different barrels, because of the influence, because of the age. So the barrel I use this year, and I use a portion of that, and I use it this year, That's fine. That's the taste profile I'm going to get. But after a year longer in that barrel, it's going to have changed. It's going to be, again, it's going to have the age on it. It's going to have a different flavor profile. So I don't have the same ingredient. And in fact, I'm probably using a different barrel altogether. It might be a bourbon barrel. It might have sat in the same place the last one did for the same length of time. but because of the influence the barrel is going to change. So you're actually using the reverse of making a cake. You are starting off with the cake and what that cake will taste like and your job is to find the ingredients that will make that up. And that is the wonderful, amazing, beautiful part of being a master blender and being able to hone in on that and every single year consistently bring out a product that your consumer, which has enjoyed last year, is going to enjoy again next year, knowing that they have confidence you're going to give them the same wonderful experience and taste.

Kerry Moynahan:
Okay, so earlier you took us through the distillery. It's a very loud process out there, so if you can give us a quick rundown from beginning to end of what we did, then we can throw some video over it so people can actually see and hear you.

Woody Kane:
Sure, no problem at all. So what we're looking at is, we start off, we take a look at some of the grains that we're using. You can see clearly you've got your barley, you've got your wheat, and then you've also got malted barley. So barley on its own is straight from the field. You've got your malted barley, which is when you take your barley from the field and malt it so that you can get enzymes to start reacting so that it's going to be ready to convert the starch that's in there. And you also then have your wheat. they end up getting broken down in the mill room and you get your broken and you can see the difference between the barley which is unmalted and also the barley which is malted. You can see that plainly. What you also have then of course is the whole working the wheat in that mill room. So it goes through what we call our sacrification, liquefaction, in order to break it down, get all of the starch that's in there, manageable and also when it comes to making a grain we use wheat, we also add a little bit of malted barley in there because we want the enzymes from it, those natural enzymes that are there. So all of that ends up getting broken down, getting that beautiful sugars to come out of it so that can be transferred then for fermentation. when it comes to our barley, depending on whether you're making single malt or if you're making pot still. If it's single malt, it's 100% malted barley. If we're making pot still, it's a mash of the malted and the unmalted barley together. So, once we know what mash is coming in, from then it's the exact same process. It goes into a cooker, from the cooker it moves over to the mash tun. So, the cooker which we looked at in there, what we call it is a mash conversion vessel. That heats it up, gets it ready, gets it primed. It starts getting ready with those lovely sugars starting in there, moves over to our mash tun. In the mash tun, it's going to take all of those beautiful liquid, lovely sugar liquid out so that we can put it over to our fermentation tank. That happens three times with water on top of it. So the first one, the water is already in with the mash conversion vessel. Second water goes in the mash tun, third water in the mash tun. First two that we get will go into the fermentation tank. It's nice strong sugar. The last one would be a weak sugar solution. But we need to get as much as we can out of it, making it efficient. So that liquid then is kept aside and that is used the next time we're going to go into the mash conversion vessel. So, when we are in the fermentation tank, whether it is grain, or whether it is the malt, or if it is pot still, you add yeast, that's going to convert it into this beautiful, like a beer-like substance, which is what really we're after, because what we want in this game is the alcohol, let's be honest. So that extracts that alcohol, and once we have the alcohol then, what we can do is we can go into our still room. So in the still room, you see there is the beautiful copper pots and you also have these wonderful colliums. The colliums are what we use for our grain. When we're making our single grain, this is what we're actually using it to produce it. So it goes inside, it ends up passing through the system and as it does, it goes through tons of plates and they are all gonna be stripping off the alcohol and allowing it to really be purified and get the best out of it in the highest quality we can. And in actual fact, We are one of the most technologically advanced distilleries in Ireland today because of the fact that during the pandemic, we decided to upgrade the whole system. So we automated things that we did not need to be doing on a manual level and also put in this beautiful column system that you see. So what happens with this is we are able to flavor profile, we are able to get lighter, heavier, whatever it is we're looking for. So it's really gonna help us when we get into more innovation in the future.

Kerry Moynahan:
Very fascinating. So once it goes through the fermentation process, then it goes through those new columns.

Woody Kane:
Goes through the column system. And at the end of that, we end up with a nice green asparagus. It comes off around maybe 4.3, maybe 4.5. And then it ends up going into the barrels. And it lies in wait and sleeps away until it is ready. And that's what's great about this distillery. A lot of people focus on, oh, it needs to be 10 years. It needs to be 7 years. It needs to be 12 years.

Kerry Moynahan:
No, it needs to taste good.

Woody Kane:
Yes, and Niall is fantastic at that. So, hand on heart, I can say that every single cask that is in the warehouses has been tested by Niall. And our decision on when it's ready is not necessarily, it has to be X amount of age. It's ready whenever we decide that is the quality that we are willing to stand behind for Royal Oak Distillery. You're very welcome here to Royal Oak Distillery in the heart of Ireland's Ancient East. My name is Woody and I'm delighted and really proud to be able to show you what goes into the unique process in every single bottle of the Husker Irish Whiskey. It begins with the rich fields around us. We carefully source and select our barley and natural ingredients from the surrounding area. They're stored here in our silos with a capacity of 60 ton each. All of our ingredients are natural, even down to our water. We take our water from our locally sourced natural Barrow aquifer, which is 70 meters underground. All of this combines together to create the wonderful Busker whiskey that you will be tasting. Now, let's go on to the next part of our journey, milling. So here we are at milling. The mashing phase. What happens here is the barley enters the mash tun. As it comes along, it's combined with some hot water. The enzymes and the starch in the barley begin to react and it produces that wonderful sugary wort. we take that wonderful sugary wort that was in the mash tun and transfer it to our fermentation tanks. As the transfer takes place, we cool it down and when it's at the right temperature, we add yeast. Once the yeast is inside, the fermentation begins. That is when it's going to begin its wonderful journey on triple distillation in a place that is unique here to Royal Oak Distillery, our still house. So here in the still room, we have our column stills, which are used to make our grain whiskey. Not only that, we have these beautiful copper pots as well. So the distillation begins with that wort from outside being fermented, and it travels then into our wash still here. So as that fermented barley goes inside, we begin to heat it up. As it heats up, the alcohol will begin to rise up along the neck, having that all-important contact with the copper to purify it. We take the best of that and we move it on to our next still, which is our intermediate or faint still. In this still we repeat the process and this time we cut the alcohol and allow only the best to move forward and that travels into our final still which is our spirit still. This is all important because it is from this still here that we end up making that cut to choose the finest most exceptional spirit that will go into our barrels to become our whiskey. So to create our unique flavor and taste experience, we used various aged casks. Here, we have our American bourbon cask. This will offer us some beautiful sweetness, vanilla, and of course, creamy caramel. Then we have our Spanish butts here. These sherry butts will give us those dark tones that we're looking for, as well as some nutty notes. and we have our beautiful Sicilian Marsala barrels. These ones coming from Cantina Florio 1833. This is going to offer us some of those beautiful complex notes as well as some of the dried fruits that we're going to look for. That is why on our blend we talk about triple cask, triple smooth. So as we say in Ireland, sláinte.

Kerry Moynahan:
Let's taste some of this quality.

Woody Kane:
All right, so let's take the grain. So we're going to start off with the grain. Here you go. So our grain, the influence here is bourbon and Marsala cask. That's what we're looking at here. So what you've got, you've got your beautiful bourbon cask and you've got Marsala. When it comes to Marsala in particular, it's very important not to go by age because Marsala can be quite strong. So it's important to allow your experience and of course the nose and the taste to lead you to when it's ready. And the blessing of the Marsala is that the owners of the company, Il Vassarono, also own Cantina Floreo. which make Marsalazzi oldest winery in Sicily from 1833. And we are blessed to be able to get the finest casks directly from Florio straight here to the grounds of Royal Oak Distillery. So here it's sweetness abound. Oh and the nose, you've got that beautiful, beautiful sort of caramel, that vanilla in there, a little bit of raisin in there as well. And I love the wine finish on this. It's just so good.

Kerry Moynahan:
mouth is just an abundance of sweetness and that fantastic like a dried fruit stare at the back just like you're saying like a wine sort of a feel to it as well beautiful a beautiful whiskey so i think i told you last time we spoke um you have the same name as my father and every time we'd go to dinner somewhere fancy that had chicken marsala he would get the chicken marsala every time the rest of the family were getting like ribeyes and new york steak and some kind of fancy red meat I'm like, Dad, why? He's like, I don't like the red meat. Well, because his whole family did it well done. That's the problem. So yeah, all my life, he always had chicken marsala. So every time I see a marsala cask, I think of him. And every time I see this one, I think of him and you.

Woody Kane:
Ah, well, there you go. You see, and that's wonderful. And that's what it's about. Whiskey is about that. That's what I think whiskey is. Whiskey is about stories, about memories. It's about connection. And that's what I think is always wonderful about that. That's delicious. Yeah, no, it's fantastic.

Kerry Moynahan:
All right, what do we have next?

Woody Kane:
So we spoke about your grain. So now we're going to talk a little bit about the malt. So the malt, what we have here is we have our single malts, 100% malted barley. And this goes through the process of triple distillation, those beautiful copper pots in there. As it travels through, it really gets a good time with the copper. And that's vital, it's very important. And at the end, we end up with a beautiful spirit, which rests in a bourbon cask. And with this, we have influence from bourbon and also all the Rosa Sherry. On the nose the last time, we were picking up the sweetness. Now here.

Kerry Moynahan:
It's a very different nose.

Woody Kane:
That fruit nose here. The fresh bit of elderflower in there as well. So fresh, floral, fruity. That's really what we're looking at here.

Kerry Moynahan:
I don't even smell barley on this.

Woody Kane:
No, no, no. OK. On the little note of a A little bit of a grassy note I feel in there as well. And that would pick up me for the barley side of it. But even that sweetness, like a lot of people talk about some of that sweetness of the barley. When you tasted it inside, you got a feel of what that sweetness held. So you can see it coming through here.

Kerry Moynahan:
It's got a nice little bite on the palate. But then the finish is a little smoother.

Woody Kane:
Very gentle. I mean, these singles are all at 44.3%. But taste-wise, they're just gentle. They're non-offensive. They're not going to really attack you there. Where they really hold well is in the flavor profile. So you've got both of those characteristics of the wood coming to play in here. You get some of those lovely fruit notes in there. I mean, from the nose, I always pick up that sort of apple-pear type of a nose. Yes, pear. That's what it is. Yeah, I always get that. It's beautiful. Definitely pear. And then on the taste-wise, I get that lovely creamy, nearly a buttery note in there. Nice sort of a creamy oak feel just there around the palate. And I get a slight bit of like a chocolate at the back, just like a bitter sort of a feel from chocolate just at the back.

Kerry Moynahan:
Yeah, like a dark chocolate.

Woody Kane:
Yeah, but then it finishes off with that lovely luscious fruit notes just finishing.

Kerry Moynahan:
Also delicious.

Woody Kane:
So that is our single malt. So when we move on to our next one, which is a pot still, the pot still is a true characteristic of Ireland. So when you talk about pot still, it is a style made in Ireland, and it is made by taking your malted barley and your unmalted barley, mashing it together. So while the last one was that fresh, that fruity, that floral note, here what we're looking for.

Kerry Moynahan:
It's a little grassier, I think.

Woody Kane:
More deeper tones, yeah, a little bit of a, like more freshly, freshly mown grass. So one of the words I would often use with this when I'm talking about it is like a petrichor. So like, you know, when you walk out and that rain just comes down on a dry day and hits the ground and the earth and mix, just that smell, that natural sort of feel to it. That's what I get from this one.

Kerry Moynahan:
This one tastes a lot like that one, but it has, it's a little smoother. Okay. Also creamy.

Woody Kane:
Yeah. Okay.

Kerry Moynahan:
And a little bit more earthy.

Woody Kane:
I often find the arterial notes in this just fantastic. I get deeper notes of dates, figs, that sort of side of the fruit feel. But what I love about this, and I wish we were actually doing a pot still run at the moment, because when you walk into the still house, when we're doing a pot still run, one of the notes you will pick up from the spirit itself is a chocolate orange note. And I always get this on my nose. I always pick it up, which I love because a lot of people talk about the barrel being the biggest influence on the whiskey, but the fact that I've got chocolate orange in there, just with the spirit, and I feel it with this as well, really says, you know what, yeah, you know, the spirit's here, hello, I'm here, taste me, and I really get this with that one. I love this. That spice at the very start of this is just fantastic.

Kerry Moynahan:
Yeah, it's like... this one the spice hits you in the middle of the palate, this one hits you on the front of the tongue. Yes. It's like it kind of just shifts.

Woody Kane:
Yeah, so this one you get that spice feel, and that's the unmalted barrel it gives that. Yeah. You get that spice feel at the start. Some people get it there a little bit up along the sides, but then you start to get into those darker sweet notes as well, like figs, like dates, and all of that as well in there. Absolutely. But it's a beautiful, beautiful one. I really love this. I like this. This is my moment when I think about We're coming into it now, of course, the cold weather you experience here already, which you love, you love, it's great.

Kerry Moynahan:
I know, I do love, because at home it's really hot and it's starting to get humid and mosquitoes moved in and I can't wait for them to leave for the winter.

Woody Kane:
Yeah, we don't have that.

Kerry Moynahan:
And I said, when is a good time to go? Oh, October, good, because they won't have mosquitoes, right? Let's go.

Woody Kane:
Yeah, and you're dead right, we don't. But what we do have, and which I love, is the start of the cold weather.

Kerry Moynahan:
Oh, I thought you were going to say midges, and I was like, why would you say you love midges?

Woody Kane:
No, no, I don't like them either. When you're walking in a field, you'll discover you don't like them either. But what I love is that start of the cold weather, because that tells me it's pot still time. It's time for me to have an open fire, book in hand, pot still in the udder. And I spend most of my time nosing. And I just love what the pot still offers. It offers so much complexity in there. You get quite a lot from it. And the deeper you go, the more you find. And I love that about our pot still. It's a fantastic one to have.

Kerry Moynahan:
It is fantastic.

Woody Kane:
Yeah, so we will finish up our tasting on the blend.

Kerry Moynahan:
All right.

Woody Kane:
So our blend, as I said.

Kerry Moynahan:
If I recall from last time we drank this.

Woody Kane:
Yeah.

Kerry Moynahan:
I generally am not a huge fan of blends. Okay. And I think that I looked at the bottles when they arrived and I said, Oh, there's a green one. And I wanted that to be my favorite. And I said, Oh, it's the blend. Okay. And then when we tasted on the show, I was like, Oh, That was my favorite.

Woody Kane:
Yeah.

Kerry Moynahan:
Well, that was a good year, year and a half ago, I think.

Woody Kane:
I believe so.

Kerry Moynahan:
So we'll see how my taste buds have changed because this one is gone. I still have, I think these actually at home, I think these two are empty and now on the pride shelf. And then these two are still in the pride cabinet for guests whenever they can come back.

Woody Kane:
Very good.

Kerry Moynahan:
I mean, it's, I've had to get two cabinets since the pandemic.

Woody Kane:
Really? Yeah. Wow.

Kerry Moynahan:
Are we ready? Let's do this.

Woody Kane:
All right. Let's have a little taste.

Kerry Moynahan:
That's got a little... What is that on the nose? Hold on. I feel like there's a little strawberry on the nose.

Woody Kane:
Okay. That's what I love about whiskey. People get so many different things. It all depends on what mood you're in, what sort of feeling you have, what you've eaten.

Kerry Moynahan:
I've never gotten strawberry before.

Woody Kane:
Okay. Well, for me, I usually get tropical notes here, so what I think... Oh, maybe that's what it is.

Kerry Moynahan:
No, stick with your strawberry.

Woody Kane:
Stick with it.

Kerry Moynahan:
Well... I mean, I am thinking Hawaii when I smell.

Woody Kane:
Okay. Okay. Yeah. So for me, I get banana. I get a little bit of banana.

Kerry Moynahan:
That's why, because I always have strawberry banana together.

Woody Kane:
Okay. Well, there you go. That's what it is. Now just take the strawberries out. Whatever's left. That's what you got.

Kerry Moynahan:
I don't know. It's like a little bit. Well, if it's a really, really ripe banana, because it's a sweeter smell than a green banana.

Woody Kane:
Yeah. There is a sweetness in there. So you still get the caramel and the vanilla in here as well.

Kerry Moynahan:
Still my favorite blend. It's just, I can't get over how good this is.

Woody Kane:
And we hear that a lot, which is great, because our focus since the very, very start, our mantra in this distillery has always been quality. You can see that when you go inside.

Kerry Moynahan:
I mean, look at the legs, they're still on here.

Woody Kane:
They'll hold, and they'll hold very well, and they'll hold for a while. And it's due to that sort of insistence we have on quality in the ingredients that we use. I mean, like, all the ingredients are all from maybe 30, 40 miles around this distillery. You know, everything we have between the barley and the wheat that we get, it's all from around here. The people that work here, you'll find them in that circle as well. Anything we can get, we'll get local because we know this is a fantastic area just around here. The beauty that we have here is not just aesthetically beauty, it is also arterial beauty. It's real, you know, it's there, it's something that you can just go out and you can feel. You can feel it in the air, you can feel it in the ground, it's there. And that is why Carlow would be very well known for the beautiful barley that we produce. Back in the past, people would have thought toot and nail just to get that barley from the southeast area. So we are blessed that it's just all around us, you know, and Yeah, it just it comes through you can really feel that quality coming through in the liquid and from the blend We get a lot of people who are very pleasantly surprised at how good that the blend actually performs It's still amazing.

Kerry Moynahan:
I mean You know, especially when scotch was the big king, right? Everywhere you went. It was a blended scotch a blended scotch. So when I was, you know in my early 20s, I was like Tried it and not the big fan Then as the whiskeys matured and they started doing single malts, then I'm like, oh, well, wait a minute. I kind of like that. And then I thought, oh, maybe I was just drinking, maybe it was just too young to drink it before. And then I'd go back to some of the blends. I'm like, nope, nope, nope. So there's, I have one favorite scotch blend. But this is definitely my favorite Irish whiskey blend, and I just can't get over how good it is. Like, if you had not told me this was a blend, I would not have thought it was a blend.

Woody Kane:
Sure. Yeah, well, that's what I love about it. It changes the concept. Like, a lot of people look at blends, and when they see them, they just think, oh, you know, it's inferior. But I think the truth is, it's about taste, you know? It's about quality. It is about what you get from it. It doesn't matter if it is a blend, if it's a malt, if it's a pot still, in this case here with the three we have, even if you're picking up a beautiful single grain, it's about what you get from it. That's the main thing with it. With this, it's so smooth, it's so gentle, it's so easy to take. What we're trying to do, really, is we're trying to get people to be able to see that the blend is what we start off with. You know, when you start off drinking, you can't really afford to get the high-end anything, really. You might buy a blend. So if you're going, why don't you buy the best you can get? You taste that, you go, wow, that's amazing. And what I always like to say is, You go into a liquor store, okay, and you had the Busker Blend, and you think, wow, that's fantastic. I'm actually going now to meet my prospective father-in-law, and I want to impress him. And then you think, oh, maybe I won't go to Blend. I wonder if there's anything else. So you look, and the majority of new releases are going to be quite pricey. We want, just as we have with the offering of all of these whiskeys, we want it approachable. We want to make whiskey more approachable to people, not just in taste profile, which we have done, but also in cost. So you will find that we have these very, very reasonable costs to allow people to move up in their whiskey experience that they're it's not just oh i drink blends that's all i drink you can actually move up for i think over in america it's i think it's about five dollars five to ten dollars more and suddenly you're up in here so if you are going to that perspective father-in-law you can pick up a something more premium, and he's going to see that, he's going to see it's the bus screen, he's going to say, hey, take her, marry her, you know, stay, stay, stay forever, you know. Right, exactly. But we want people to be able to experience, get the chance to be able to move up in the world of whiskeys, and then your door is open. there is so much out there to experience. And we're going to be on that because that's the whole innovation project here. We want people to experience things. We want to be able to offer those experiences, whether it is through wood, through styles of whiskey, through different mash recipes that we're using. We want people to be able to look back and go, yeah, do you know what, I tried this, it was fantastic, it was amazing. And the biggest thing is, it was good quality. That's really what we want people to be able to walk away with. So make it more approachable. Give people that choice. Allow them to experience. And that is what we do with the Buster Irish Whiskey. And that's where the whole concept of the Buster came from. Because the busker is here, if you're traveling around, you might see people playing on the street. A little bit of music, maybe there's a bit of prose, could be a bit of acting, could be whatever. But the busker is the person who's got a quality to offer to the world. And what they do is they start off by showing it to people, by letting them experience what it is they offer. And if you think about any of those people out there, people stop and look, you know, like a busker always gathers a crowd, that's what happens, and they're there offering this wonderful experience that they can give, they're there offering this wonderful quality, and that is what we want to do. But if you think back to the great buskers of years back, you're looking at the likes of Bono and The Edge of U2, they started off as buskers, you've got like Codaline, you've got, at the moment you have like Gavin James, who is really taking the world by storm at the moment, he started off as a busker, so Yes, they have this quality to offer. Yes, they're happy to have it there in Ireland on that street, but it's more than that. It's about saying this quality's here, but we know that the world can avail of this. And it's exactly what these great artists who started off as buskers did, and we're hoping that's what we can do as well. We can have that, and we can be there in the places where people are enjoying themselves. If you want to have a party, you know what, we're ready. Let's just get the busker and go for it, you know?

Kerry Moynahan:
So let me ask you, speaking of things starting off and progressing, what's the five-year plan right now? Are you guys going to introduce any more flavors?

Woody Kane:
Yes, we are going to. Innovation is what we said. I mean, look, this distillery, it's like a playground. You want to play. The swings are there. That's fine. OK, everyone's going over the swings. Great, we have that. But the slides are over there. it's there, whatever it is that's there, we want to say, okay, well, let's see what we can do with it. So you're going to find that as we move on in years and you start to see things develop, you're going to see quite a lot happening. Even next year, we've got our plans on making a special release with a pot still. So it's all about taking a look at what we can do, what we can play with, and just trying to give people what they're looking for, which is experience.

Kerry Moynahan:
So tell me more about Caroline and when she came on board and how things have changed or improved.

Woody Kane:
Sure, so it started off with John Ramsey. And John Ramsey, he was working with Niall and they were creating the flavour profiles along with the people here. And we were sort of seeing, you know, what is it that we're looking for? What is the voice of the busker? And this is how the range started off. So this will always be that range. That core range is what it is. Because once we offer that to the consumer, we say, this is what we have. Here we have a beautiful sweetness. in this malt we have the wonderful fruit notes, in the pot still we've got that spice plane, and of course in the blend we have that wonderful smoothness. That's what we always want to offer that to our consumer. But We want to offer more. We don't want to just say every single year, this is all we've got to put out there. People are hungry for something different. People are hungry for change of some kind. And they'll either like it or they won't. And that's fine, because we're going to have so much here. And Caroline is a big part of that. She's got some fantastic plans for the future. She was, of course, going to stick with what John had with these, that taste profile. She'll work on that. But as well on the Back Boiler, she's been looking at different projects and looking, as I say, looking at barrels, looking at some of the mash builds, looking at those as projects, as possibilities, and moving forward, that's what we're going to see. But she's been fantastic since she joined herself and Miler. When they lock themselves away, they won't tell us anything. So, when did she join? Caroline started, it was this year, I believe. Gosh, I can't know. It was before Christmas, wasn't it? Maybe before Christmas last year. I'm not 100% sure. It's about a year. I won't say. But she's here. She's been doing some absolutely fantastic things. One of the big things that she's really, really pushing for is the training of how to taste, how to work on a taste profile. So the full team are in, and she's training them all. She's working on it. Something simple like, let's say me and you sit down, okay? We've got two completely different backgrounds, okay? I've tasted things you may never have tasted, and vice versa. So if you take a sip of something, and you say to me, you know what, that tastes like eggs, or strawberries in this case, and I'm here going, nah, that's... that's bananas you know and I mean like not only are you bananas but so is the taste but what it is is you're looking at um that's the taste okay so from now on what we look at is every time you get that taste okay and every time I get that taste we give it a name whatever that name is Maybe it is bananas. Maybe it is strawberries. But every time I taste that banana note I get, I say to you, that's strawberry. So you understand that it's the same man. It's the same taste. That sort of a thing.

Kerry Moynahan:
So has she put anything in a barrel yet that's innovative, that's in an experimental stage?

Woody Kane:
Of course. Okay. And you can't tell me about that. Of course. All right. So, yes, she has. Look, I mean, you know, herself and I are really working on some fantastic things down there. And it's great to see it. I mean, you walk in and it's just amazing just to see them. And that's what I mean by like a playground. It's like, you know, they're at play, but this is serious play. And it's great to see. And it is perfect for the consumer because what we're going to be able to offer is just it'll just blow you away Awesome, Woody.

Kerry Moynahan:
Thank you. It's been a pleasure to actually come here in person and see you.

Woody Kane:
It's great to have you here.

Kerry Moynahan:
And I can't wait to come back in a couple years and see what Carolina's cooked up.

Woody Kane:
Here we go. It's all good.

Kerry Moynahan:
That does it for today's show. To read notes on this episode or learn more about our guests, please visit barrelroomchronicles.com. Want to interact with the show or have questions for our guests? Then ask them on our socials or send us an email through our website. Or better yet, leave us a voicemail on our anchor page and your recording might be played in our new Speak Easy segment. If you like what you heard, please rate and subscribe to the podcast. If you really liked it and you want to show your support, buy us a whiskey through our Ko-fi site at ko-fi.com slash BRC. or become an exclusive member of the Barrel Room Parlor, where you'll get exclusive content not seen anywhere else. If you work in the whiskey or spirits industry, or just have a deep passion for whiskey and want to share your spirits journey, register to be a guest through our website. Last but not least, please enjoy your spirits responsibly. Thanks for joining me. Until next time, so long.

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