BRC S2 E20 - Distillery Delights: Exploring the Art of Collaborating with Local Businesses (Hawaii P2)

*Transcripts are auto-generated, please excuse any typos.

00:00:00
It is 05:00 somewhere, and you've tuned into season two, episode 20, which is part of our two part Hawaiian special. For those of you who'd like to watch this episode, I highly recommend it. We're live in person on Oahu. You can view season two on our website, YouTube, Spotify, Zencaster and WhiskeyNetwork. Net.

00:00:16
I'm Kerry Moynahan, and in today's Club corner, I conclude my visit to Hawaii by attending the Highland Games in Waikiki. I'll speak with their athletics director, Chris Carr, who also happens to be a skill bridge intern at Ko Loud Distillery. But first, I'll speak with Eric Dill, one of the owners of the distillery, and his wife Ginger, about their whiskey journeys, as well as taste some of their chocolate and honey made in collaboration with other local businesses. Tales from the still is next. Eric Dill, you are one of the owners here at the distillery.

00:00:44
Tell me, how did you and Ian come up with this idea, and what made you want to come here in this place to show off what veterans can do with whiskey? Well, the idea originated in 2008. I was deployed to Baghdad, and some soldiers, not Marines, got busted for making Moynahan on Camp victory. And I was fascinated by it. Like, how the heck do they know how to do that?

00:01:13
And keep in mind, this is before the do it yourself revolution of YouTube. I mean, YouTube existed, but the DIY revolution of YouTube hadn't really kicked in yet. And so I did all this reading, and what I realized, if I wanted to learn to do it myself, that I would be committing a felony. Exactly. And I didn't want to mess with my clearance, so I brewed beer instead.

00:01:38
And then it kind of got rekindled when a good friend of mine, who is in the process of graduating from law school, did a case study about the federal government potentially changing the law that would allow craft distilleries in 2010 2011. Time frame, they're looking at changing the law, and it was really restricted at that point. There was less than 200 entities in the entire United States that were licensed to the still spirits. And if you think about 338,000,000 people and only 200 have a license to distill spirits, but they were looking at changing the law. And my friend astutely thought that the same thing that happened with craft breweries would happen with craft distilleries.

00:02:21
And he knew how to do it and start his own distillery. And then I would go visit him, make whiskey with him. Always had a passion for whiskey. What's his friend's name? His name is Travis Barnes, and he runs Hotel Tango Distillery up in Indianapolis.

00:02:37
Oh, okay. Another disabled veteran owned distillery. The original, I believe, if I'm not mistaken. But anyway, I saw his lifestyle, and I knew I was going to retire from the Marine Corps at some point. And Ian was here.

00:02:52
We'd previously been stationed here. Surfing is probably one of the biggest passions in my life. So the idea of combining the two of them and making whiskey and surfing for a retirement gig was a really hard sell to Ian, but I managed to convince him that it was the thing for us to do. And here we are now. So how long have you guys been here?

00:03:15
And how long have you been. I know you have the barrel aged gin and the barrel aged whiskey. That's another whiskey is not quite ready, right? No, we've been producing whiskey since 2018. Okay.

00:03:30
But we have different expressions that come out that have different focus. Old Poly Road itself is a blend, whereas we'll sometimes release a bourbon that's not a blend. Single barrels. We did one a couple of years ago that was a four barrel blend. So very small quantity, 734 bottles.

00:03:56
Three, seven, five bottles. And sold out in, like, ten days. This last year, we did an expression that was a bourbon that had been put into a cast, that had been used to age honey. Okay. Which gave us really interesting notes.

00:04:19
Old Poly Road, we've been producing since 2018. Tell me about that. Where does the name come from? So the old Poly Road was at one point, the only way to get from the east side of the island to the rest of the island. So Honolulu, all those are on the other side of the Koalao Mountains, which the distillery is named after, and you could either go government cut, which is now called the Kamehameha highway, which goes around the south side of the island, or you could take the shortcut over the old Poly road.

00:04:51
And the old Poly Road is actually started off as a trail, and it was actually recorded when Captain Cook first visited the island. The natives took him over the island via the trail, and his botanist recorded it. Oh, wow. It was so steep that the natives told him to take their shoes off, and so they did it in their socks. And poly actually means cliFf.

00:05:14
So that Gives you an idea how steep the road is. And it's one of those roads that has progressed over the years. It was originally, like I said, a trail, then it became a donkey trail, then it became a single lane road, then it became multiple lane road that was single in one spot. And you would drive. Well, you drive up, and if the flag was There, you could Go, you grab the flag and take it with you.

00:05:39
If it wasn't, you either had to wait for a car to bring the flag to you, or you had to walk to the other and grab the flag and then take your car. It was so steep and narrow that you couldn't back up out of it in case another car was going. And there's actually people that have come into distillery. They're old enough to remember when it was that way. Then it became a two lane road.

00:06:03
Now it's a four lane divided highway. So the poly highway might be how you got. Yes, it is. So did they have to blow up some of the land there to get it cleared? Yeah, I mean, they had to do considerable construction.

00:06:17
But it's interesting, it's still very precarious. I mean, we had a slide cover one of the tunnels just in 2019, and so they had to close it down for almost a year in order to remove all that earth that ended up in front of the tunnel entrance. No one got hurt. It's crazy. That is crazy.

00:06:36
Massive landslide, but no one got hurt. So when These guys got busted for making the Moynahan, did you immediately think mash? Because I did. So, yeah, they were getting corn. I didn't know.

00:06:47
I didn't know. I meant mash. Seven.

00:06:52
And Honeycat were in the tent making their little Moynahan all day. So these guys were using, like, a coffee maker to do their water again. I was fascinated by it, and so it intrigued me. Marshalled and everything. Oh, yeah.

00:07:06
So what happened to them? I don't know. I mean, it was one of those things like you heard about on base. I didn't know them, otherwise you would. Have tasted their miniature, probably.

00:07:18
Well, I was pretty straight and narrow when I was deployed. Yeah. Okay, well, that's good. Yeah. As far as, like, violating general order number one, I was never really tempted to.

00:07:29
Good. So how long were you in the military? 27 and a half years. But you're only 28. How is that possible?

00:07:35
Yeah, I enlisted in 1993. Okay. Yeah. Were you class in 92? No, I graduated from high school in 89.

00:07:48
I went to Texas Tech on a track scholarship for a few years. Okay. Wasn't quite working, so. Found myself on the yellow footprints at. Did you go in as an officer?

00:07:57
No, I was enlisted first. Really? Even though you had a degree or you didn't have a. Didn't. I didn't have my degree at Devlin.

00:08:02
Like I said, it wasn't quite working at. And then I found my way, and Marine Corps helped me with acquiring a little self discipline and motivation and dedication. Do you miss? Yeah, always. Yeah, I missed the people and getting to freefall and get paid for it.

00:08:22
That was awesome. Yeah, that's pretty cool. But I left it. Lieutenant Colonel. Oh, nice.

00:08:28
I got selected for full colonel and decided to decline it and stay here and make whiskey. There you go. And not move my family anymore. And did your family say, let's stay here? We like it here.

00:08:41
Yeah. I think the biggest factor was the oldest child went into high school after we had PCs here from Australia, and the whole family had done four overseas moves in the previous five years. Wow. And so we just decided to settle everyone down, at least for the next three years. Okay, and where'd you meet your wife?

00:09:08
And theY're at Texas Tech, actually. Oh, yeah. So she's been along this whole. Oh, yeah, yeah. She's the one that actually runs this place, by the way.

00:09:15
Oh, okay. Well, where is she? We should talk to her. She is. She.

00:09:19
Ginger. That's Ginger. That's Ginger. Yeah, we saw Ginger. Yeah, she runs the whole place.

00:09:23
What are your goals for the next five? We've got. We're hitting some big milestones this year with the opening of the tasting room, and we're going to continue to develop this. We're really happy with the way it is right now. Gorgeous.

00:09:39
But right now, like I said, we're in a development process with. Moynahan is fantastic. Yeah.

00:09:47
It's probably the best white dog that I've had in terms of smoothness. It's really good. And then actually being able to identify some of the corn flavors without it being. I'm not going to lie, the first white dog I ever had was a bourbon white dog. And I thought, how in the heck does this turn into something decent?

00:10:05
Yeah. And I went to Scotland and I did a tour, and I tasted some of their white dog. I'm like, still not very good. And then lately, I've been having a lot more white dogs as I do the show. There's a lot of people, hey, here, try your white dog.

00:10:20
Yeah. And I don't know if I'm just getting more a better palate or if I'm appreciating things more. I think the palate is part of it, but, yeah, you get exposed to some that most distillers won't let you try their new make. Can we get two pipets of new make? Is that possible of OPR?

00:10:42
Most don't let people try their new make. You get a certain amount when you do a tour here. It's actually a programmed amount of cumulative tasting so that it doesn't go over our limit and we factor in and we let people try new. Make old Poly road hearts at a considerable proof, and I'm very rare. Do you get the whiskey shiver?

00:11:12
Even though it's at pretty potent proof. It's pre barrel. It's pre dilution before going in the barrel. So he'll bring some over here in a little bit. So tell me about your tasting tour.

00:11:24
How does that all work? Somebody wants to come here and do a tasting, do a tour. What are they to do? So first thing they're going to do is they're going to go to the website. There's plenty of places.

00:11:32
There's plenty of icons on the website that say book A. And the website is ww. Koalaudistillery.com. I'll spell that out. Koolaudistillery.com.

00:11:41
At Hawaiian, you double pronounce your repeated vowels, right? Okay. So they come here, they go on the website, they click on something. And what are they? They'll click, book a tour.

00:11:58
And it's just like now, the way you book movies now and you go on, you find an open time. So you go on, you'll get a calendar presented to you, or just like you're booking a hotel room, you'll get a calendar presented to you. When tours are available, how much room is left on them, and then you can just click on there. And we do discounts for Kamaina. We also do discounts for military.

00:12:23
So if you're a military, please take advantage of that. But it's a deep discount for military. Good as it should be. Yeah. Notable.

00:12:36
How long is the tour and the taste tour. So we call it the Distilling 101 Tour. And there's a beeping. Yeah. Okay.

00:12:44
We call it the Distilling 101 Tour. And we take you through the distilling process. We start with ingredients. We talk about mashing what that is, converting the starch and grains to sugar. We explain the fermentation process, turning those sugars into alcohol and then distilling.

00:13:00
Separating those alcohols out of the solution that they're in. And the science behind that gets a little nerdy. But I think people really appreciate it. Do you guys ever do a tour bottling where they can actually. Oh, great.

00:13:16
We'll move into aging and barreling, and then we open up the bottling line. And people that are on the tour get to make their own bottle. That's awesome. We do everything by hand here. So they get to see that whole process and then the thing about our tour is it's not a tour guide doing it.

00:13:35
You see that a lot here where the tours are actually done by someone who doesn't really know the process. It's actually one of the distillers is always the person giving the tour. So it's either Ian or myself, Justin, Olivia, or Michael, or one of the other distillers. Here are the ones that are actually giving the tour. And we take you through the entire process, including the most important step in the whiskey making process, which is drinking it.

00:14:03
There we go. And we do a guided whiskey evaluation. So how we not just drinking it, but like, hey, learn how to actually evaluate a whiskey. This is how we go through the process of evaluating whiskey. So if we're doing a barrel pool, trying to determine what's going to be blended, this is the process that we use.

00:14:22
And it's an education. But you also learn to appreciate whiskey more that way. And you also get to try the other products, but it depends on what's actually in production at that time.

00:14:37
Right now, if you come in, everything that you got to taste today, you get to taste in a tour. Very cool. This is new. Make old Poly Road. How do you put this?

00:14:51
Do you squeeze it or do you. So this is when you're actually doing a distillation run. You have to do this constantly? Yeah. Distillers literally have to drink on the job.

00:15:02
I'm in the wrong field. Yeah. So what I will typically do is I'll put it on the back of my tongue. Okay. And I'll try to keep my mouth and my nose open as I'm tasting.

00:15:12
Okay, let's try it.

00:15:19
Now. That's warm. Well, it's probably because it's warm. It's right up still. Oh, wait, let me see.

00:15:30
Taste some corn. It's got a little sweet note. I really like it warm. I've never had whiskey warm. I should try to try it.

00:15:40
Well, no, I take it back. I've had hot toddies. Yeah. But I haven't had just whiskey warm. Yeah.

00:15:46
When you sample whiskey, do you do it with a drop of water?

00:15:54
No wonder your whiskey is so good. That's delicious, Newmaker. Yeah. The water here is the star of the show. The water on the east side of the island is absolutely fantastic for distilling spirits.

00:16:06
Where do you get your water? Do you have like a lake or. No. So all water on the east side comes from four different wells. Two are located up in the Kahuku Laie area.

00:16:19
There's another one that's in the vicinity of Valley of the temples, and then there's a fourth well in the vicinity of Waimanalo. And then they go to a central processing facility on the east side of the island. And then it comes here. Most distilleries or breweries will use reverse osmosis. We don't on purpose, because I want the mineral content that's in there.

00:16:42
All water on Oahu is volcanically. You know, there's some famous water companies out there, and their whole claim to fame is they're volcanically filtered. Everything here is volcanically filtered. There's a great webpage on the Board of Waters website that talks about the life cycle of a raindrop on Oahu. And we have some of the purest rain on the planet just because of where we're located in the middle of the biggest ocean, and we're also the furthest inhabited archipelago from any landmass.

00:17:12
So we got really pure rain to begin with. And then according to Board of Water, when rain lands, that rain that's landing right now out here, it'll matriculate through the volcanic soil and rock for, they say, on average, 28 years. So about three decades of filtration, pure rain already. And then filtration where it's picking up mineral content and things like that, it is superior. And what's really interesting, too, the geology is where we are right now.

00:17:44
We're right at what used to be the center or the core of a shield volcano that fractured and then slid off into the ocean. So we're like right where the magma chamber used to be. And tell me about these flags over here. Are those one of yours? Those are considered guide ons.

00:18:02
So they are company level guide ons. So that one on top is for Charlie Company, 1st Reel Entertainment. So the Charlie Company within the 1st Reel Entertainment. And the second one, that was mine. That was the company I was in command of when I did a deployment to Fallujah.

00:18:23
The one below it is for Fox Company, Second Battalion, Fifth Marines. That was Ian's company command. He was in Ramadi, actuAlly, when the Awakening happened, and so he was in charge of the civilian military operations center. So basically the hub of our interaction with their government in Ramadi. While the Awakening was happening, he was actually made a shake by the other sheikhs there.

00:18:48
In Ramadi, he was so facto, there's actually a National Geographic special about it. We'll have to watch that. So tell me, you've got a couple of. The top one just as a flag. The second one has like, a little piece of paper or something.

00:18:57
And then two looks like coins. What's that say? They're the coins associated with that unit. Okay. And then I also noticed over here, you guys have a bunch of challenge coins.

00:19:06
And I also noticed that Justin is making challenge coins. Yes, absolutely. Let's talk about Justin's challenge coins. Yeah, so all those coins are distillery coins. So those are ones that were given to the distillery.

00:19:19
Okay. I have, like, probably 200 at home. I have two at home. One is from the DAR. I'm the Daughters of American Revolution, and we have our own coin.

00:19:29
And then one I just got when I was in Ireland doing the show, and I wish I would have brought the DAR one. I would have put it up there. So Justin's a bit of coin expert. He was making them for the different chief classes in the Navy when he was associated with helping develop chiefs. But then we said, hey, why don't we do a coin for the distillery?

00:19:54
And so we talked about what we wanted on it, and then it's got the Colau logo on one side, but we also have a Marine recon reference on the back. And then we put a little homage to the distillery on the back here as well. It says dangerously smooth. It is dangerously smooth. Up next, we'll be on location in some loud places, but we've done our best to filter out the excess noise.

00:20:25
Today's Tales from the still is brought to you by barrel Strength talent. Join founder Leah Niskenin this fall for the Edinburgh Whiskey Academy's first in person certificate course in sensory appreciation to be held in New York City. These workshops are perfect for spirit industry professionals looking to upskill and whisky enthusiasts of all levels. Book your seats now@barrelstrengthalent.com. Well, Eric Dill.

00:20:47
Eric Dill. You are double spice. Yes? You are double spice. So you are part owner in this sort of, maybe?

00:20:55
Technically not. I am the LLC manager. Okay, so technically, Ian and Eric are the two owners. But by marriage, yes, by marriage and by default, yes, definitely.

00:21:10
So when your husband want to. I want to stay in Hawaii and I want to make a distillery. And you said, excuse me. Well, so he has always had not crazy, but crazy ideas, and it's just always. His mind is always moving and always trying to figure out what I want to do, what would be something cool to do?

00:21:33
So he started talking about this in probably 2015. Wow. Yeah. For a while. And so we actually thought he was going to retire from the Marine Corps in Texas in 2016 17.

00:21:49
And so he had started thinking about doing it there. And so then kind of the plan evolved into he ended up staying in the Marine Corps. We made a couple more moves, landed here, and so then the plan switched to trying to do it here. And how do you feel about the weather in Hawaii versus Texas? Which do you prefer?

00:22:08
That's hard. I prefer California. Yes. San Diego is my perfect temperature. Sunny and 70.

00:22:17
Sunny and 70. But really, as long as I have some air conditioning, I'm fine. I'm just always hot. Yeah. And so air conditioning here, I can do it.

00:22:26
Air conditioning in Texas, I can do that amount of mean. This is beautiful. Who can not want to live in Hawaii? Oh, it's gorgeous. It's gorgeous.

00:22:34
And I've been here, what, four or five days? And I only got my first mosquito bites today. Really? Yeah. I guess they're not in Waikiki.

00:22:41
They're out in the. So. So earlier I spoke with Ian, and he was telling me about this chocolate. Yes. So tell me a little bit more about this chocolate, and then we'll drink it with this lovely old fashioned that Justin made for us with these fancy, yes.

00:22:58
Yes. So this chocolate is a collaboration that we did with Manoa Chocolate, who is a chocolate peer chocolate company based here in Kailua. They make beautiful chocolate that wins competitions around the world. And I'm assuming they grow their own cocoa, Coca Cola. Some of it they do here.

00:23:17
Yeah. Okay. Some of it they do, and then some of it they source from other places. But Eric and Dylan Butterbot is his name, and they serve together, and it's such a small community here that everybody kind of bumps into everybody else, and everybody says, oh, hey, you've got to meet my friend that's trying to do this or whatever. So anyway, they kind of, in the water, came up with, hey, we should collaborate and do a chocolate bar together.

00:23:39
Yeah. So this beautiful chocolate bar, they bring us their cacao nibs, we soak it in our whiskey for about four months, and then they take it back, dry it out, process it, and then make this beautiful chocolate bar. It's a 70% dark chocolate bar, and it's just beautiful dark chocolate on the front and the whiskey on the back. And they don't interfere with each other. So it's just really nice.

00:24:05
Very smooth, not overwhelming with whiskey that together. This is an old fashioned with chocolate bitters, macadamia, simple syrup, and then chocolate bitters that we make with the leftover whiskey from the whiskey soaked in the cacao nibs because it's too bitter to do anything else with it. Nice. That's a wonderful combination. Okay.

00:24:34
And you also have another collaboration with honey. Tell me about that. So we do a collaboration with a local honey company called Kailua Honey. We give them one of our bourbon barrels. They put their honey in it, rest their honey in it for about a month, and then pull it back out.

00:24:50
And then they bring us the barrel back. And we have been putting bourbon back in it.

00:24:58
What they have made, they make all different flavors, but with ours, they have done a straight, just a bourbon honey. Okay. And then they also put some vanilla beans in it and made a vanilla bourbon honey as well. That sounds amazing. Both of those taste.

00:25:19
Are you guys going to bottle this? Because somehow we got to think about how to do it. Can't smell anything, but that's okay.

00:25:30
Oh, wow. I have made really good recipe for sweet potatoes with honey and rosemary. So this is beautiful. I really like this. It's very creamy and very light.

00:25:49
Not overbearing again. And this is the bourbon one. That's the bourbon. And this is the bourbon. I haven't tasted this one yet.

00:25:57
Oh, well, here we go. A vanilla virgin.

00:26:03
Okay.

00:26:08
Oh, wow. I can totally taste the vanilla. That's amazing. And do we know what the bees pollinate from? I don't know.

00:26:20
That's a toughie, especially here, because there's vegetation everywhere. A lot of lily koi. A lot of them pollinate through a Lily koi vine. But I don't know the answer to that question. That's also very good with the old fashioned.

00:26:36
So tell me, when you guys decided on Hawai, how hard was it to say, let's do Hawaii, and then how hard was it to get all the paperwork together to actually start the story? Well, the Marine Corps made the decision for us to land in Hawaii, and we had lived here before, so that was a no brainer because they sent us here. But the bigger piece, to stay here was a bigger part of the decision, because we had children that were in middle school and late elementary. We had moved a lot, and so we decided, okay, well, we're going to stay here because they want to finish high school. Right.

00:27:18
That was that paperwork wise, it's federal and it's local, and there's a lot of regulation. Of course. It should completely be regulated. Of course. But we have found that the federal government is very easy to work with.

00:27:36
Really? Yes. Surprisingly. Heard about it. I know it, but, yeah.

00:27:45
And we also had some help. Eric had a Marine that he had served with that has a distillery in Indianapolis. Right? Yeah. And so we kind of were able to use their knowledge to help us, which was amazing, and we're happy to share with the next person, just because that's how things get done easily.

00:28:04
Right. Yeah. So federal government has been really easy. The local government was just a little bit more challenging just because we weren't really sure what we were doing. And that this is kind of the federal government just kind of gives you that piece of, yes, you're allowed to do it, and here's your boundaries.

00:28:22
But the local government is really regulating agents. What are you going to do? What plants are you going to kill? What are you injured per step? Yeah.

00:28:28
But we find that we have a very good relationship, working relationship with the Liquor commission here, so we're hoping that continues. And then from idea to fruition, how long did it take to get the first part of the distillery up and running? Yes. So, right about one year. We formed our LLC in January of 2018, and we sold our first bottle in February 14 of 2019.

00:28:55
Wow. So all in all, really about ten months to kind of really get to a point where we could start producing. And was the gin the first thing you guys did? No, actually, we did it backwards, really. We did whiskey and what we did, because Eric and Ian, we kind of looked at what all was being produced here anyway, so there's beautiful rums made on this island.

00:29:17
There's beautiful vodkas and things like that that are made on the other island. So we looked at it, Eric and Ian looked at it like, well, there's kind of a whole whiskey, so let's try that. And then, of course, being a micro distillery, and we don't have five years and millions and millions of dollars to start producing. No letting air breath so that we could actually produce that whiskey. We do blend.

00:29:38
And then we're just slowly trying to increase our amount of getting a new still and all of that. Did you source then some whiskey and blended? Okay. Yeah. So we made our own and then sourced and then blended together.

00:29:51
We had the same recipe. Great. And kind of blended together. Wonderful. And then we started gin and Moynahan last year.

00:29:58
So we did primarily whiskey for about two and a half, close to three years. And then now we're starting to branch out. That's great. And then where can you be found if you wanted to buy? Yes.

00:30:10
So you can find us here locally in Foodland supermarkets and Tamura's, which is a local chain of liquor stores, Safeway, you can find us in Costco, sometimes you can find us in the ABC stores, and then you can find us in just some of the little local bottle shops. And then hopefully you can find us in a lot of the hotels down in Waikiki and various places in the Marine Corps Exchange. And then Japan also. Yes. Yes.

00:30:38
In Japan. And then you can also order from our website. And we have a distributor in California who can do shipping direct to consumer. Fantastic. So anywhere in the US, if you go to their website, there are five states.

00:30:50
Yeah, only five. I know. Only five that you can or only five that you can? Only five that we cannot. Okay, good.

00:30:56
This person that we have sourced doesn't have that. Direct consumer of the States. That's a lot. Yeah, there's a lot of those. Well, five at least.

00:31:04
But they're annoying. Yes. No, you're not. I love you all. Okay, well, fantastic.

00:31:11
Thank you so much for your time and letting me taste these wonderful treats. And I wish you guys the best of luck in the years to come. And I can't wait to see you in stores all over California and the continent, the mainland. I know it. It's been a ride.

00:31:26
Thank you, Ginger. You're welcome. Thanks. Club Corner is up next. Stay with us.

00:31:33
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00:31:56
I'd like to declare our 40th annual festival in Highland Games Open. Yay.

00:32:11
For those of you listening to this episode, I'm here at the Highland Games in Waikiki showing a few clips from the event. The games kicked off with a color guard, a large bagpipe band, Highland dancers, as well as an opening speech followed by the national anthem. The featured games this year included the Caber toss, hammer throw, stone put, Highland dancing, and more. For more information about the Highland Games in Waikiki, please visit barrelroomchronicles.com for today's show. Notes.

00:33:39
Chris Carr. How are you today? I'm doing great, Carrie. How are you? Good.

00:33:42
I'm so glad that you're out here today. My friend Melanie here invited me to Hawaii for a vacation. We found out about the distillery, then I met you at the distillery the other day and found out you were going to be at the Highland Games, which was one of the reasons she chose to invite me was because she knew I'd enjoy coming to the Games. So I'm very interested in to know more about what it is that you're doing with the Games. I know that the distillery is sponsoring.

00:34:06
Yay. Good call out. Yeah. So you're the Games director? I am the athletics director for the Highland Games portion of the event.

00:34:15
So this is a full Highland festival at Scottish Highland Games. So we have lots going on today. I think you've seen the dances over there, the Celtic bands, the Pipers coming out. So we've done a lot. And then what's always great is to have the heavy athletics out on the field in the background.

00:34:35
It's the precursor, you might say, to kind of modern track and field. Okay. Yeah. A bunch of Scots farmers in their fields, grabbing whatever farm implements they had and may have had a few whiskeys, and I bet I can throw that further than you. And here we are.

00:34:51
We saw you out there with the big stick. You were the only one I saw that actually got it to flip over.

00:35:02
So Danny and I had a little shoot out there with the caber. So Caber is Scottish for log, and that's all it is, is a log about that one sits about 18ft long. That's heavy. Very heavy. So how did you get into working on this festival?

00:35:20
So they invited me into the games about four years ago. Unfortunately, it was right at the start of COVID We had to cancel the event that year out of an abundance of caution. We weren't quite yet in full lockdown, but it was definitely headed that way. So four years later, here we are, our first time back, celebrating what is now the 40th Games here in Hawaii. My first since I've been on island here with the Navy.

00:35:43
Okay, cool. And are you still active in the Navy or are you? I am, yeah. I'm still active for a few more months. My retirement is approved and I'm en route there, and I think that's where we met.

00:35:55
So I'm currently finishing up my time working at Skillbridge Internship, picking up an extra, learning how to run a business, learn how to make whiskey. Cool. So what do you think you'll do after your internship's over? So the hope is to do exactly what Eric and Ian have done here in Hawaii. We'll be moving back to Alabama.

00:36:15
My wife's family has some land out there. Oh, nice. It would be a dream to open up a small distillery, craft distillery there. Very cool. And then what would you want to be making at this distillery?

00:36:26
Definitely making bourbon. I am a Scotch Peter guy myself, so if I could make a smoked whiskey I'd be interested in trying that out with either hickory smoke or something. Oh, that'd be nice. Lots of trees grow out there and be fun just to play around and. See what can make work very cool.

00:36:44
So tell me what you've learned so far at the distillery. And when you saw that it was on the skillbridge options of things to do, were you already thinking about doing this, or did you say, that could be fun? No. Yeah, it's kind of been a dream of mine for quite a while. It started off as a home brewer, but definitely enjoy drinking whiskey and would always have loved to have made it.

00:37:06
And happened to go up there and met Justin, who's a retired Navy chief. He and I got started talking, and he told me he had done a Skillbridge there and actually started the program. At that point, I was still a couple years away from retirement, but knew we were probably going to finish up here, my time in Hawaii, and head back. So I immediately said, Justin, I'm going to come talk to you in about a year and a half. Nice.

00:37:27
Sure enough, I did. Everything I've learned from OliVia has been great. It's interesting coming from what I knew was going to be the problem of coming from a kitchen home brewer to a commercial, even as a small craft distillery, a commercial operation. Just the scale, the speed, the repeatability of the processes that they've done there. So learning how to do that kind of at speed and at scale has been pretty amazing.

00:37:58
So what's your favorite part? Have they brought you into every part? Do you help Olivia with the brewing? I mean, the distilling? And then I saw you guys were wrapping up the bottles the other day.

00:38:07
Oh, yeah. We do it all the way, from milling the grains through, putting it in the bottles, and palletizing it up and getting ready to head out to stores. We're hands on in every part of that process, and Olivia is really great because there's four of us right now on the production side of the Skillbridge, and she really wants us to be hands on. She's a great mentor for that. There's a lot of things she could do and do better than we do, but she lets us work through it.

00:38:34
She's watching over our shoulder, make sure we don't mess up too bad, correcting us when we do, but letting us actually work and kind of learn from some mistakes and clean them up and keep moving. That's awesome. And then this festival is going on for two days, right? Correct. Yeah.

00:38:50
So we're out here on Saturday. This is for the athletics portion, our big competitive day. So we have the three classes out here, the open men, of which I'm competing, as well as running. We have an open women's class with some great world class women's throwers that are down from Alaska. Wow.

00:39:06
And then our master's class men over 41, junior mixed in there. So a 16 year old who came down from Alaskans just getting his hiling career started. Wow. Very cool. And then is it just Alaskans and Hawaiians here, or do you have other people?

00:39:20
We have a couple of folks out from California. Okay. Yeah, we'd absolutely love to open it up. I got my start in California throwing and then moved out with the Navy to the East CoaSt and threw up and down the East coast there before coming here. So I know it's a great place.

00:39:36
People love to come to vacation in Hawaii, and what better time to do it than plan it around a Highland games and come spend one of your vacation days throwing. Perfect. We've had a great week. We saw the veterans Parade, 50th anniversary of the last vet coming home from Vietnam. It was a really good little cute parade there.

00:39:54
Had some lot of bands, a lot of marching bands. We had a lot of really fancy cars going through there, some trolleys and things. It was great. So. Yeah.

00:40:03
Well, Chris, thank you so much for bringing us out to the games. Hope you're having a great time. I am having a great time. And hopefully elementary school. Otherwise, yes, we'd have a know.

00:40:12
I know. Maybe they should just move it somewhere next year for it's too bad there's. Always the after party and you probably don't want to have too many whiskeys and then go through one of these cavers. Oh, no, it's not a good. No, that's not good.

00:40:24
All right, well, thanks again. Thank you so much. On the next barrel Room Chronicles, we're back in Northern Ireland to kick off our two part season finale. Join me as I follow the progress of the JJ McConnell's distillery, housed on the A wing of Kremlin Road jail in Belfast.

00:40:41
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 website and your recording might be played in our new speakeasy segment.

00:40:59
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00:41:24
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