#1797 - Josh Barnett

Joe Rogan (0:04)

The Joe Rogan Experience.

And we're up, Joshua, talking. What's happening?

Josh Barnett (0:15)

What's happening is I've wandered into some sort of a strange portal that's transported me here to this wooden galaxy-filled, I don't know, I mean, bunker, starship.

Joe Rogan (0:29)

It's just a studio, but you brought with you War Master.

Josh Barnett (0:31)

You're damn right I did.

Joe Rogan (0:32)

Yeah, I love this stuff. How did you, so you helped develop this with this company?

Josh Barnett (0:40)

Yes, to a degree.

Joe Rogan (0:43)

Did you give them taste parameters?

Josh Barnett (0:46)

We were, yes.

Joe Rogan (0:47)

Cheers, sir.

Josh Barnett (0:47)

Hey, cheers.

Joe Rogan (0:48)

Good to see you.

I told myself I was going to take a while off of drinking after this weekend. Guess not.

Josh Barnett (0:59)

Today ain't the day. You smoke cigars? What's that? You smoke cigars?

Actually, part of the development of the whiskey prior to doing a single barrel product was doing a lot of tasting with cigar clubs by our original head distiller. So, this, part of the creation of this was also what would be the best bourbon to go with a cigar.

Joe Rogan (1:29)

Oh, this is perfect because it's got smoky, like a smoky essence to it.

How do they do that? Do you know how they do that? I saw a video.

Josh Barnett (1:35)

Yes. Well, what we do is we take... Thank you. We take 75% of our 75% corn mashbill and we smoke it in a big shipping container on these racks.

And then, after three days, we then take all that smoked corn, take it back to the distillery, and then we will mill it with the 25% roasted corn out of that 75% corn mashbill, and then we mill it with also a 25% malted barley, or malted rye. And we mix it all together, we get our mash going, and then starts the process of fermentation.

Joe Rogan (2:29)

And the company Warbringer, had they been around for a while? Did you know them, and then you decided to do this with them?

Josh Barnett (2:37)

I did not know of them, they reached out to me.

And I was actually in the process of trying to work with a distillery to do whiskey. Because I started to see a lot of this stuff popping up with celebrities slapping their name on these different things, and I have been someone who's a connoisseur of whiskey for a long time, and I wanted to do it, but I wanted to do it in a way that I felt was legit.

Joe Rogan (3:02)

Yeah, it's hard, because people come to you with whiskey that they've made, and they're like, here, I want you to try this. And you're like, eee, this is not good.

Josh Barnett (3:11)

Well, there is plenty of that. Whiskey has been an incredibly fast growing market at this point, and the shelf space right now is getting pretty full up.

Joe Rogan (3:21)

It's also hard to make. It takes a long time to do it right.

Josh Barnett (3:26)

It does.

Joe Rogan (3:26)

Like Buffalo Trace ages their shit for eight years. It's one of the reasons why it's so good.

Josh Barnett (3:31)

Well, and the thing is, Buffalo Trace has a rick house full of thousands of barrels to choose from, to do whatever they want with. When you're a startup, or let's say a craft distillery like us, if we have 30 barrels sitting around, we're pretty happy.

It takes a lot to get this stuff going. It takes a lot of little subtle things, which yeast you're using, how long your fermentation cycle is. And then as it all goes to that distillation run, the low wine run, the stripping run, is important, but that's pretty much full tilt. You're not really looking for anything in particular other than just watching what the level of alcohol you're getting out of it is and what that yield is. But then on that second distillation run, where the real juice comes from, you got to make your cuts at the right place. You want to avoid getting a bunch of heads and you don't want a bunch of tails. But you don't want no tails because some of those volatiles or higher esters will interact in the barrel in ways that come out really pleasant.

But as you initially taste it, it might put a little what you feel is like some slight taint to what you're doing. But it's all a process and the thing is you can't rush any of it.

Joe Rogan (4:45)

Is whiskey like wine where you want to let it sit open for a while? Does it change the flavor?