How He Makes Over 3,000 Barrels of Whiskey…By Himself

In this video, we're going to do a barrel pick with Crittentons Distillery. We're also going to take a tour of the facility and find out how this one guy produces over 6,000 bottles of whiskey by himself. Be sure to stick around until the end, and I'm going to show you how to get your hands on one. But first, let's learn more about Crittentons. I'm here in Kiln, Mississippi, population of about 2,000 people. If there's a town, I missed it on my way in here because there was a whole lot of nothing, and then here I am. We're going to visit with Crittentons Distillery, which is a tiny little distillery. I was told they have about three employees here, and the first product they ever put out was a bottled-in-bond, so a four-year-old product. And that takes a special kind of person to start making whiskey, stacking it up for four years, and then put it out as a bottled-in-bond. So I'm interested to see what they've got going on, learn a little bit more about their operation. I hear they're open to creative ideas, and Lord, have mercy, do I have all sorts of dumb ideas. Let's see what we can talk them into doing. We are in the middle of nowhere, but I didn't expect an outhouse in the front of the distillery. Like, is that what that is? That's definitely what it looks like. Gives you an idea of exactly how remote we are right now. Apparently there's like a whole liquor store attached to the distillery, which is a new thing for me, never seen that before. You ever seen a liquor store attached to a distillery? Never have, we got it here today. Hey, there's a first time for everything, no doubt about it. It's pretty cool to have a freaking liquor store inside your distillery, but there's so much more to come. Stick around as we take a tour of the distillery, learn a little more about how whiskey is made, and we pick some barrels. All right, we have worked our way inside here to the tasting room. Got a nice cool bar there behind me. Y'all might recognize some of these folks. We got Spillway and Mississippi Sippers, and this is the man himself right here. Why Kiln, Mississippi? Why start a distillery in Kiln, Mississippi? My home is. You were one of the seven people born here and you decided I'll start making whiskey. Kiln, Mississippi has a long history of moonshine and illicit whiskey production. Being close to the coast, it stayed warm down here. The moonshiners could run their mash all year long, including during the winter because we didn't get cold down here, and you had easy access to the Gulf. You also had a lot of trains down here, a big logging area, so they'd ship whiskey back north up to Chicago, especially during the wintertime. Let's see this still. We hope to someday, maybe, we could start our own distillery, but I got one problem. What's that? I don't know how to make whiskey, so it's a small problem. It's not a big, it shouldn't stop us, you know, like we can overcome that maybe. I don't know, but like you're going to show me how. We can go back there and I can show you the process. Firstly, you know, we have the grain. We have two corn bins out back right here. We've got some red wheat right now from up in Kentucky. We have barley. The white pipes you see are a flex auger. It augers it up. That tan unit's a flow scale, kind of weighs in motion, and drops it into our triple pair of rolling mills. Basically, your first pair is a cracker for your corn. Your second pair starts getting smaller, and your third pair turns it into a flour. This is our mash cooker. So basically, we do a step mash. We'll fill this tank up. Inside, it's got a mixture of that black motor on top. It runs basically two propellers. So we fill it up with water, and we'll put our corn in there, and we'll cook that first for 45 minutes. After we cook that for 45 minutes, we add a little bit of water, and we'll put in our wheat or our rye. We'll cook that for 30 minutes. Then we'll do our final addition of water for our cook, and cool it off a little bit. We add our barley. We'll cook that another 30 minutes. It'll crash cool it, and add our last addition of water, and then once that gets down below 90, we'll put your yeast. That process takes four to six hours. After that's done, we'll put in one of our fermenters back here. How much whiskey are you expecting to get out of one of these tanks right here once it's all said and done? We'll get about four barrels per tank. So the way this column works is it pumps up this little tube here on the side, and that'll come out of our beer well, and it'll go up 30 feet up to the top, and that big copper cross tube up there is about six inches, and it's kind of like a shotgun style with a condenser on the inside. So you have smaller tubes, and below each of these windows is a perforated plate, and as that sewers fall and it's hitting these plates at the same time, we're pumping in steam from the bottom that'll run a thousand gallons in approximately six hours. It'll go into our doubler here. A doubler is basically a small pot still that goes in there as a liquid. It's got its own heating circuit. You get another complete distillation in there. We proof down to 120. Federal maximum barrel entry proof for bourbon, 125. We'll produce about four barrels a day now. You asked me earlier why I killed Mississippi. We're hot. We're humid. We stay hot. So one of the key components is oxidation. You really need to be above 60 degrees to really oxidize, and so that's why being down here works a little bit better instead of being somewhere else. And then the high humidity keeps too much evaporation. Go ahead and say it. Go ahead. It's better than Kentucky for aging whiskey. Go ahead. He said it, not me. He said it. Let's do what I do really well. Like I'm making whiskey, don't know anything about it. Drinking whiskey, on the other hand, I'm very, very skilled at. Let's do a barrel pick. We've got a whole crew of folks here that are going to help us with our barrel selection, right? Y'all going to help? Y'all going to help me pick one? Professional. A lot of drinking professionals here to help with this barrel selection. I think to make good bourbon, you need big barrels. I've read a couple different studies that really say you need a barrel that's a minimum of 30 gallons. You can't. I have had some 30-gallon ones that are good. The exceptional whiskey is almost always 53. 53 is kind of a standard. I think you get a good ratio of oak there. You start getting enough evaporation. You get enough oxidation. When these go overseas, these barrels get reused, usually for like scotch. So when they go to Scotland, they take the heads out of them, take the bands off, and just shift the stage, and they rebuild them. When they rebuild them in Europe, they're bigger barrels. I didn't realize that. I mean, I guess it makes sense. It's efficient, but I didn't realize they were different sizes when they put them back together. Yeah, the European standard's different, and if you ever look up like how many gallons is a barrel, it's not 53. So how many barrels do you think you have, or is that like asking a man how many cows he has? Is that, do you get mad about that? This warehouse, when it was full, we had about 2,000 in here. Now we're up to almost 3,400 barrels of production and storage aging. We probably still have close to 3,000 barrels. This is why distilleries don't cash flow, right? Because you just got to make as much whiskey as you can. You sell more whiskey, you make even more whiskey. It's kind of a chicken and egg type deal, right? We never sourced any whiskey, which is kind of crazy now. If you look at most brands, most brands start out as sourcing whiskey from places like Indiana, Kentucky, or Tennessee. For our bourbon, we started out with a four-year-old bottle and bomb. I wasn't going to release a subpar two-year-old and tell you it was the best thing you ever had, because you'd probably laugh in my face. Let's drink some whiskey. It is hot in here. Lord have mercy. The angel's getting a share of my sweat here too. My favorites, like the favorite favorites, mostly weededs, but like I'd like a good traditional bourbon too. My ball and bonds are weeded. Pretty much all the barrel finishes we've done is a traditional with rock rain instead of weed in it. That's what bourbon looks like when it's fresh off the vine. Oddly enough, you know what type of wood their bums are made out of? What's that? Poplar. Why? Because it's poplar. He set that one up, didn't he? Didn't he? He's been priming that joke for a while. It's delicious. The mass bill on this, if you look at it, we're almost 12% barley and almost 17% wheat. You look at most of the big guys, they use more corn because corn is cheaper. Your flavoring grains, your weeder, your rye, and then of course your barley gives you a good kind of buttery mouthfeel. It's interesting because I don't typically like bourbons with that much barley in them, but I mean, I don't, I don't taste it in yours. Like it doesn't like a lot of that malted barley gives me kind of an off flavor and I don't, I don't get it in this one. Yeah. You're not a Scotch guy, right? I don't like Scotch or Irish whiskey or any of that stuff. Yeah. And they have a lot of malt in them. So I can, yeah, that makes sense. He's well on his way to being an Irish whiskey fan. We're going to convert you one day. If by well on my way, he means I found one where it tastes nothing like Irish whiskey because it's finished in sherry barrels, then yes, I am well on my way. If that's what you mean by well on my way, I have taken one very small baby step in that direction. I'm open to my ways being changed. I would like nothing more than to be a part of the cool kids who love Scotches. I want to be a member of the club and I want to smoke cigars and drink Scotches and be all sophisticated. That is the least fancy thing I have ever heard. So are we contrasting this against other barrels or is it just like, here's a barrel. Do you like it? What are we doing? Last time we were here, four people couldn't feel their legs. Well, that's what you get for bringing amateurs, man. Don't, don't bring people can't handle it. I mean, it's almost noon, you know, so we ought to be well into this by now. Just said you didn't like a lot of barley and it's almost 16% barley. Okay. That's cool. I, I, I love nothing more. This is the thing all y'all need to realize online. I love nothing more than to be proven wrong. Like that's my whole goal in life is to be wrong. I don't try to be wrong. I'm usually right every once in a while. I'm wrong. And it's a lot of fun. Tell me about this barrel. So this barrel is from January of 18. It's only 68% corn, 16% wheat and 16% barley. That's still good though. You can taste it, but it's not a malt, a lot of like Chattanooga or Dettling. Like I get all that malt on it. And this one, I still just would not pick this as a high malt. Would you agree? I agree a hundred percent. Like it's good. You can start to feel that malt creep in, but it's, it's still not a high malt. Or y'all let me know in the comments, this is obviously not going to help us with this decision, but would you rather see me pick something completely unusual that you're never going to be able to replicate or see again? Or would you rather see something that's a little more typical of a normal release? So you have an idea of what these distilleries are putting out on the shelf. We're hunting another barrel back there, man's going deep into the rickhouse. Yeah, see how it has got a wave to it. Yep. I think what actually it is, is they're sealed better. It smells delicious. That almost tastes like it has more rye in it. Traditional bourbon. Yeah, I could taste that, but it sure is delicious. Yeah, traditional bourbon to me is actually sweeter. This is our early barrel number 39. Okay, so this one's older than the other ones. Yeah, it's older. So this one is traditional bourbon, 17.6% rye, 77.6% corn, and 8.8% barley. I might like it a little better than Elijah Craig Toasted Barrel, honestly. Like it's a little softer. Like it's like the toast is not over the top. It's been barreled for six years in a toasted barrel. Yeah, that's definitely different. My goodness, what is that? What is that? Like that tastes like something I've had recently. I don't know if we will buy this barrel and this barrel will be available for y'all, because they already got their eyes on it. I can, you see his eyes. But honestly, if somebody had handed me that at Cash Strength as a rye, that would be one of the best ryes I've ever had. We give rock, paper, scissors, you versus the sippers. We arm wrestle or something, at least a game of skill a little bit. That has to be bottled at Cash Strength. Like it has to be. If you water that down, me and you are no longer friends. No, no. Okay, like I don't want to be bad news. You put water in that barrel and we're not talking anymore. This video is not going out. I'm going to say bad things forever. I was like, he makes a nice whiskey, but he also does a lot of dumb s**t. Wait a second there, we got the best water ever. Okay, yeah. You don't put it in that barrel. You do not put it in that barrel. I will most definitely take that barrel off your hands. You sure? I mean, I don't want to be that guy. Y'all invited me here, but I will also be that guy. I don't want to be that guy, but sometimes you just got to step up, you know. You have footage of Matt saying he doesn't have a four grain. We found a four grain. It is the forgotten four grain. Barrel pick number one is done, but it won't be the last one in this video. Let's check out some of the weird whiskeys Matt has for us. Have you got like a personal fan? I do, sir. You need to find this, put it in the Amazon link. Lord have mercy. Check that out. Just clips on the belt. I've been cheating. What in the world? See the thick girl back there. Life sucks. You see port and sherry, double oak. Craziest one these guys made me guess is Armagnac cask. What's crazy about that? It's about 120 gallons. I'm like, what is Armagnac? Armagnac is like a brother or a cousin to cognac. They're both made in France, a little bit different style. They asked me to order this barrel in and it arrived on its own pallet. It's taller than my five-year-old son. Like I really think based on some of our experimentations, we might need a little bit of this. We might need a little bit of sherry. We might need a little bit of rye. We might need like a Christmas blend. Yes. This is one barrel you have to be very careful of because the thief will fall all the way into it. So it will steal your thief. That was punny. I mean, that tastes pretty good. What is that old barrel? Like that barrel looks like it's been around a while. These are their cognac barrels. Let's try it right now. Now the pressure's on. That's better than the Armagnac. And this is the Cuban shuffle. This is Armagnac and cognac finished. Like normal, we're talking like traditional. That's the word we're using. Traditional bourbon. I still think it could be better. It's better. Like is, is that better than just the cognac finish though? I don't know. I don't know. I think you add a little rye to that and it's going to be exceptional. JT, you keep talking like that. We may make you an honorary Mississippi shuffler. I mean, you can make me Mississippi shuffler, but you're going to have to get my name right to do it. These folks in Mississippi, I like, I'm pretty sure that Deliverance was in Georgia, but Alabama was once part of the Mississippi territory. Yeah, but we were smart enough to leave. We were like, we're getting the hell out of here. We ain't dealing with these people. I enjoy this collaboration and this input. And I mean, people that really enjoy bourbon, you appreciate it. I'm really appreciative of you mentioning my whiskey and talking about it. And it took me two years to build it, four years to make it and age it. And you're just now seeing eight years worth of work. I mean, let's be honest about that. I could be a doctor. The one metal rack there is a day of my life. So what we have over here is some rye whiskey finished in rum barrels. Ooh, okay. We got to pop one of those. Mississippi whiskey finished in Mississippi rum barrels. And that's, that's so good. Here's the thing is I think that would be great blended with that Armoniac and Cognac. But honestly, that's really good by itself. I mean, if you put a, if you put a French oak stave in something, it's done already. Like it's finished. It's garbage at that point. Like you've just ruined it. Soiled it. My extra wallet right here, who just sponsored a video. And in this, we've got cash. Look at this right here, right there. 20, $20. Now here's the problem. Here's the problem he has is that I'm the one that has to say whether or not I like the barrel. So you just stick that in your beard right there. And I will not lie, but you said love. You didn't say like, we got a bet going. He still got it under his beard. It's been a while. Like the camera's been off for a little bit. What are we, I forgot what we even bet. Like some French oak barrel. I'm going to like, you're going to like it. I'm going to love it. No, no, it wasn't like it. I'm going to love it. It's going to be absolute love from a French oak barrel. See it doesn't like to his favor, a check mark in his favor is it does not smell like a French oak stave finish. I'll see that. You see that, you see that below the beard, beard money right there. Love is such a strong word. Come on, man. We're both big bearded and beautiful. You've got to love this. Love is such a strong word. I'm going to give you the 20. It's a really good whiskey. I don't know if I'm gonna go with love though. Like we're in a Rick house. It's like a hundred degrees in here. And he's been carrying that under his beard. I don't care about that personal fan. He's got stuck in his butt crack. That's still some sweaty 20 right there. And I don't want it back. Like that's what it boiled down to. Let me see the butt crack fan right there. You got the butt crack fan. I mean, I'm a little jealous. Oh God. You didn't have to go that. This is my life. I don't know how I got here. I really don't know what timeline I'm on. And it's like one o'clock in the afternoon on a Thursday. Like this is where we're at in life. And I appreciate it. Hey, I appreciate y'all watching hit the like button. If you would, if you enjoy these videos, maybe subscribe if you're not already. And again, we're, we're trying to shine a light on a lot of small distilleries that maybe don't have wide distribution. We're trying to take you places and experience whiskey that you can't see in most places. Right? So again, hit that like button, subscribe, leave me a comment. They've got one more barrel they wanted me to try. And that's supposedly up front somewhere. And then they just told me they got another barrel. There's more whiskey in the air conditioning. I might have to get a hotel here. And are there hotels? There's like seven people that live in killing Mississippi. Is there a hotel? Hey, there's the back of my truck. If nothing else, that would have some interesting flavors. So here, here's my thing is I don't give a about awards. I like what I like. So I'm not saying I'm right. So for y'all out there, they're all like finish whiskey, sherry finish. So this, this is good whiskey. I like the sherry finish stuff. I do not like it better than just the Crittentons bottled in bond. So I like it. I don't like it better than just the whiskey that he put in these barrels. So if he had to just stop months ago and put it in a bottle, I would like that better, but this is still good. And so if you like this, that's fine. It's cool. That's what it's all about. I'm not trying to say my opinion is right because I know it's wrong. It's like, I told y'all earlier in this video, all I want to be is proven wrong. That's what I'm looking for. I go out in life with a whole bunch of really strong opinions, just waiting for somebody to prove me wrong. And every once in a while they do. And I'm incredibly enthusiastic and amused by that. They're probably not going to do it with the sherry finish or French oak staves, but it's still good. It's still good whiskey. I just think it was better whiskey before they did this. You're married. You're wrong most of the time. Apparently he doesn't know about my relationship. Like I love you, Jill, but I am right most of the time. I think I'm going to buy that rye rum barrel. I think that's going to be available for y'all. I think that probably there's probably a link in the description of this video for you to buy that rum finished rye barrel right there. If they'll settle. We haven't negotiated. I'm just claiming it right now. That's what just happened. I don't know if you could see, but I am, I'm, I'm svelting here. I'm, I'm melting. I'm very sweaty and shiny. This is probably not the best looking video in the world. We're going to go find air conditioning. And supposedly these guys have a coy hill killer. All right, before we get out of here, I'm going to sign this rye barrel. Apparently, if you just put your Sharpie name on it, I may just go sign every barrel. I don't know how that works, but I'm going to sign this one for sure. So right here, let's just go in. I need to bring a bruisal sticker or something for these, but there you go. That is now officially our barrel of whiskey. And this is what they've been telling you is the coy hill killer. That's not going to happen. I'm just letting you know that you're not killing Coy Hill. Like it might be Coy Hill competition at best, but you're not killing it. Bobby's not going to bite you. I say it's the Coy Hill killer. There you go. How confident, like zero to a hundred. How confident are you that this is better than Coy Hill? I'm a hundred. A hundred percent guaranteed. It's cheaper. What's the proof? We'll go get the machine and we'll tell you. We're going to get the machine. Me and Matt are the only two people who have tried this barrel. I mean, I'm not trying to be negative. I'm not a guy that likes negativity. I like positivity. I enjoy positivity. I try to be positive everywhere I go. But when people say stuff that's out there, sometimes you got to bring them back down to earth. This, this is a fantastic, exceptional whiskey. And it does seem to have a pretty significant proof to it. I like it very much. And if he had just handed me this, I'd have said, this is a fantastic, great bottle. But when somebody says something like this, this is a Coy Hill killer. That's like one of my top five bottles ever. The Coy Hill I have is 142. I don't know why he had to get all comparative. I don't, I don't know why he had to like bring out the big, it's like, Hey, he's like, Hey, I got this. I got this. I got this heavyweight boxer. He's better than Mike Tyson. And then he wheels him out and Mike Tyson knocks him out in the first round. Like, why didn't you put him up against the better competition? Cause he's a fantastic boxer. That is a fantastic bottle of whiskey. So when they drop it, it's really good. You should go buy it. Don't let him oversell it. Don't let, don't let him, don't let him. This is not Coy Hill. This is, this is a fantastic thing that on its own is wonderful, but don't let him oversell it. But if you can grab one, do it. When will this barrel be on his shelves? It's ready when it's ready. Which means it's probably not ready when this video comes out. So y'all just going to have to like go to what is it? Facebook.com search for Spillway, follow their Facebook page. They'll post it when it's ready. I want to thank Matt Crittenton for literally shutting down his distillery to allow us to come do a barrel pick. And for the folks at Spillway and the Mississippi Sippers for inviting us to come do that pick. Without them, we wouldn't even know about Crittentons. And so I'm looking for recommendations from y'all on what our next barrel pick should be. Who are the small distillers that we can shine a light on? We are lucky enough to have a platform, thanks to y'all, where we can shine light on whiskey that maybe most folks have never tried and never heard of. It's impossible to have a marketing budget when you're literally one guy making whiskey. You waited four years to put out your first bottle, which is a bottled and bond. He's got his mother working in the office. He's got a part-time guy that comes in, but this man is the distillery. And so there's no way he's going to be able to get wide distribution anytime soon. There's no way he's going to have a marketing budget to get this whiskey in front of most of y'all. So we've made it available. We've got our barrel picks, the rum finished rye, and the forgotten four grain that went on sale yesterday to patrons. Seriously, I doubt there's any of those left. I hope there's none of those left. I hope patrons really enjoyed those and gobbled those things up. But this is the type of distillery we want to help. We want to go all out. We want to do everything we can to help folks like this that are doing it right and making good whiskey. So we have some of his bottled and bond available on our Picks website. Again, the link is in the description for those. You're going to have to buy it. You're in Alabama, Mississippi, or Louisiana where he's distributed, just go to the store, see if you can find a bottle, save yourself some money there. It doesn't matter if you buy it from me. If you haven't tried Crittenton's, get one, give it a try. Let me know in the comments your review. I want to hear your thoughts on the whiskey. I think it's a really solid whiskey. I think it's an even better craft whiskey. And for a distiller this small, I don't know anybody this small that's making better whiskey for sure. Y'all let me know your thoughts. And if you want to get one, check the link in the description to go to our store pick site and you should be able to grab one there. And if any of those barrel picks happen to be left, you could grab one of those as well. We have 12 more barrel picks coming. Some of them will have their own videos. Some of them, the videos have already gone out. The Starlight, Clyde Mays, those videos have already been shot and released. We're still waiting on those barrels. But we should have 12 more barrel picks coming out in the next two months. That's a lot of barrels in a short time span. So make sure you're a patron. If you want to get access, there's a free tier. Like just sign up for the free tier. This many barrel picks, there's a chance a few of them are going to make it through our normal patron group. And you might be able to get one if you're in the free tier or in the newsletter or in Discord. So I appreciate all of y'all's support. I appreciate the platform that y'all have given us. And I hope that by shining a light on places like Crittenton's that we're able to help folks that really could use it and are doing things right and creating good whiskey. Also in the comments, let me know who you think our next barrel pick, our next small distillery that we highlight should be. We've got several in the works and coming already, but I'm always open to suggestions. So I appreciate y'all watching. Catch you in the next one.