[Music]
[Applause]
so in 2012 I stabbed I co-founded
wilderness trail distillery with my
business partner Shane Baker
we're located in Danville Kentucky and
we make Kentucky straight bourbon and
rye whiskeys we make about 215 barrels a
day which in units that you might be
able to understand a little better
that's 50,000 bottles a day so hopefully
y'all are thirsty here in four or five
years somebody's got to supply the world
with whiskey okay so on the picture
behind me this encompasses everything
I'm going to be talking about today so
we have a distillery here so we're going
to talk about how to make bourbon over
off to the right you see a building the
black building there to the right that
is a barrel warehouse otherwise known as
a Rick house this is where the bourbon
barrels will age for over four years and
then up in the sky you see some clouds
we're also going to be talking a lot
today about climate and how climate is
important for making quality whiskey and
for that aging process so let's talk a
little bit about whiskey and
specifically bourbon all bourbon is
whiskey but not all whiskey's bourbon
for example bourbon whiskey must be made
in the United States now they say if you
want to sell it it needs to be made in
Kentucky
Scotch whisky on the other hand Scotch
whisky by law must be made in Scotland
bourbon whiskies must be made from a
mash recipe consisting of not less than
51% corn scotch and Irish whiskeys on
the other hand are made from malted
greens and another requirement legal
requirement for making bourbon whiskey
in the United States here is that it
must be aged in a new charred oak barrel
scotch and Irish whiskeys on the other
hand can be put into used barrels so
some differences between bourbon and
other types of whiskey to make bourbon
again we're going to start with a recipe
with over 51% corn we're going to add
what's called a middle grain and that
most often is either wheat or rye and
then we're going to finish that off with
a small amount of malted barley those
grains are milled into a fine flour and
that flour is mixed with hot water and
that process is called the mashing
process or the cook process and this is
where the starch in the grains is
converted to fermentable sugars that
will be consumed in a process called
fermentation that's where we add the
yeast the yeast are going to consume the
sugars and produce the alcohol the
distillers beer which is the byproduct
or the end result of fermentation that
is processed through a steel so this
piece of equipment behind me here the
big copper that's a beer column that
we're going to process that distillers
beer through and that's where we're
going to get the alcohol you can see the
clear alcohol coming off there a lot of
people ask us at the distillery you know
how come it's not brown it it doesn't
become brown until you put it into the
barrel so up through this point you know
the mashing of the grains fermentation
the distillation process this is all
very well controlled so we have
computers and different temperature
gauges that will guide us through this
process so up to this point it's very
much a controlled process next that
distil is going to go into a new chart
oak barrel and this is where the magic
happens
this is where you need
heed this very specific climate for that
aging process to occur and specifically
today we're gonna be focusing on
temperature and humidity before we talk
about what happens to that whiskey while
it's in the barrel let's take a step
back and talk about how important
climate is to producing a quality barrel
so starting with the white oak trees in
the woods obviously climate is important
for growing quality oak trees these
trees are specifically selected for
barrel production they're cut sent to a
lumber mill and they are processed into
staves staves are the individual
components of the barrel the staves are
palletized and stacked outside and are
aged for sometimes over two years the
barrels that we use for our whiskey are
air dried for 18 to 24 months and during
this air drying period several things
happen one of those things is as the
wood is exposed to the climate you know
rainfall and the changing of the seasons
there are enzymatic processes that occur
resulting in larger wood molecules being
converted into smaller structures that
are more easily extractable from the
wood something else that happens is that
you have volatilization of tannins for
example this is called d acidification
and as you can imagine just by me saying
D acidification it's taking things out
of there that you wouldn't necessarily
want to be tasting in the whisky here is
a cross-section showing
fresh-cut wood and then as it ages over
time the porosity of the wood increases
and this allows for easier flow of that
whisky into the barrel again extracting
those wood chemicals out of the wood the
barrels are then charred this is where
we blast a flame through the middle of
the barrel and it creates that char cold
inside of the barrel and that's what
gives the whisky its characteristic
amber color
now once the barrels are filled with
whiskey there
move to a specialized structure called a
barrel warehouse or a barrel Rick house
this is one of the Rick houses that we
have on the campus at wilderness trail
distillery this particular warehouse
holds about twenty thousand eight
hundred barrels and just to give you an
idea of how much whiskey we're producing
currently we fill one of these about
once every hundred days so at any given
time we have one that's almost full one
that we're finishing getting ready to
gain occupancy for one that's about
halfway built and then we got the footer
started for the next one we just
finished construction of our ninth
barrel warehouse and we estimate we'll
build another 11 of these over the next
three years so as those barrels sit in
the barrel warehouse and undergo the
changing seasons from summer to winter
time the changing temperatures cause
that whiskey in the barrel to expand and
contract and that helps to extract
chemicals from that barrel so you can
start to see the importance of climate
on the production and the quality of the
Bourbon now in the barrel warehouse
there's some other things that are
occurring that are also climate
dependent and these are chemical
reactions are occurring over time
chemical reactions are dependent on
temperature so this is another way that
climate affects the quality and the
curing of that bourbon in the barrel
something else that we see and this is
one of the reasons why Kentucky climate
specifically humidity is important is
that we get a certain amount of
evaporative loss that occurs year by
year in that barrel so if we didn't have
that high humidity we would be losing a
significant portion of that whiskey in
the barrel
other drier states like Texas New Mexico
we have fellow distilleries in those
states that may experience a 20% loss
per year in that barrel we see on
average about a 2 to 3 percent loss per
year so another way that climate affects
the quality and the end product of the
Bourbon
here's a map of the state of the United
States and the areas lit up in red are
the states that have undergone the most
significant change in temperature over
the last century you can see kentuc II
here and that kind of a little oasis
there where we haven't experienced much
of a temperature change over the last
hundred years so that's good for whiskey
production but with the change in
climate in the state surrounding
Kentucky we are sure to see increased
temperature changes over the years and
again that's going to influence the rate
at which those chemical reactions occur
and other things relative to how that
bourbon ages in the barrel now I can
tell you this firsthand
having grown up in Kentucky my entire
life you probably couldn't tell I'm from
Kentucky by my strong Brooklyn New York
accent but what we've seen over at least
my lifetime is a is an increase in
severe weather events and one of these
things is prolonged periods of drought
so we talked about you know the staves
aging outside before the barrels are
made the trees growing in the woods the
evaporative loss that can occur in those
barrels over time so these are some
things that could affect bourbon
production going forward it could affect
price if we have more evaporative loss
if those chemical reactions are affected
we might see a difference in the flavor
of the bourbon so the next time you're
sitting around sipping on your favorite
bourbon whiskey not Scotch bourbon
please
hopefully you'll think about the
importance of climate to the quality of
the whiskey and how climate change might
affect the quality and the price of
whiskey going forward thank you
[Applause]