Fair Game Whiskey

I started working on our whiskey program in 2019. At the time my daughter lived in Louisville, Kentucky and I was burning up the road back and forth. Need to be in Louisville?  Good place for whiskey research.

I took stock of all the craft whiskey makers in North Carolina—sampling, tasting, comparing.  I visited distilleries all over Kentucky and concluded I would avoid Bourbon.  Everyone was making bourbon (which is made from corn). 

Strange fun fact:  in 2008 I gave a lecture in Louisville at Moonshine University—but it was about local economy and had nothing to do with whiskey.  I do remember drinking with a preacher after my talk—sampling whiskey at 11:00 in the morning.

When it comes to whiskey, North Carolina is in the shadow of Kentucky.  In North Carolina, the word “bourbon” is synonymous with “whiskey.”

I settled on malt whiskey—my favorite. Malt whiskey is made with barley and more commonly associated with Scotch.  Scotland casts a smaller shadow over North Carolina.  By making a malt whiskey, we could be different.

Whiskey starts with a “wash.”  Grain is “mashed” in water, yeast is added, and fermentation begins.  I didn’t want to do that. I thought that if the wash was to come from barley, it should be made by the brewers of beer. Barley was their domain.

My idea was to buy wash from our friends in the craft brewing industry.  Most of our local craft brewers are larger than Fair Game.  They serve more customers—they have a larger fan base.  I thought that if I bought a wash from a local brewery, I could run it through the still and make a “souvenir” whiskey.  That is, I could make something that loyal beer nerds would drive to Pittsboro to sample and buy.

After a few calls, the idea stuck with Whit, the brewer at Bond Brothers over in Cary.  They are at least ten times our size.  I drove my truck across the lake with a couple of empty totes to buy my wash, expecting about 500 gallons.  I didn’t want it carbonated.  I didn’t want it hoppy (flavor concentrates when distilled).  I was essentially looking for a “flat Kolsch,” or a “flat pilsner.”

They loaded my truck.  Some in totes.  Some in kegs.  Fair Game had 14 craft beer and cider taps at the time—we are not set up like a brewery.  We move liquids with  a forklift  and pumps. Brewers move liquids around using compressed CO2.

I fetched a large CO2 tank from an abandoned laboratory next door, and jerry rigged a system for emptying kegs into the still.  It was a nightmare.  I sprayed myself in the face, spilled gallons on the floor, took a few golden showers, and surely created the smallest yielding batch in the history of whiskey.  Our still is 100 gallons—but it can only handle 80 gallons without foaming over.  I loaded the still, made the cuts, and packed a barrel.  Not a 53-gallon barrel.  Probably more like 20 gallons. I put it in a Squarell to speed the aging process. 

Every now and then I would taste my creation.  It was disgusting.  Smelled like wet socks.  Tasted like licking the mat after a Northwood High School wrestling practice.

One day I came in for our staff meeting and found a puddle of whiskey on the floor.  Squarrel had sprung a leak.  I moved the remaining product into a barrel.

After putzing about with my first batch of whiskey for a couple of years I decided to dump it on the compost heap.  “I can’t make whiskey.  I quit,” I told myself.

I rigged up logging chains, got the tractor ready, and I was prepared to move the barrel out of our rickhouse.  We needed the space for our rum and apple brandy.

Before dumping it, I grabbed one last sample.  It was dark.  It smelled great.  I was stunned.  It tasted OK!

I had a single bottle sample that had been left for me by a bottle salesman.  I filled it, slapped a homemade label on it, and drove across the lake to Bond Brothers for my first ever whiskey tasting with my one bottle of whiskey.

12 people sampled it at Bond Brothers.  The tasting killed more than ½ of my bottle.  Mr. Bond was there that day.  When he tasted it, he said, “Fantastic.  I’ll take 100 bottles.”

That put me into a dilemma.  It was a $100.00 bottle of whiskey.  Fair Game doesn’t get very many $10,000 orders.  I deliberated.  I fretted.  I didn’t know if I even had that many bottles to sell. 

“Take the money.” 

“Say no.  Sell it at the Plant in Pittsboro.  Let the beer nerds of Cary discover Fair Game.  Sell it one bottle at a time.”

“Take the money.”

“Wait.  What should I do?”

I passed on the opportunity.  I bottled up 72 bottles, and they shot through the till.  Small.  Rare.  Hard to get.  To this day I smile when I see customers in the yard wearing Bond Brothers t-shirts.  They came to try the souvenir whiskey—and they bought it quickly.  It worked. Come for the whiskey, come back for years because of the Plant experience.

I made my next batch with a wash from Full Steam in Durham—the recipe was for their Paychex Pilsner. Then a batch with Clouds brewing out of Raleigh.  Then a batch with BMC Brewing, my new neighbor across the street at the Plant.  Then another batch with Clouds.

We would invite the brewers out for an afternoon, for a “tap takeover with their brews, and we would release our “souvenir” whiskey.  Customers could talk to the celebrity guest brewer, and to me, that strange guy that distilled the whiskey.

Each batch was small—100 bottles give or take.  We would sell out, and that would be it.  No more whiskey drinks at the bar.  No more bottles for sale.

“What happened in March?”

“Oh, that’s right, we did a whiskey release for St. Patrick’s Day.”.

That was our whiskey program.  One day when the black walnut harvest was on, I decided to do an experiment.  I gathered pounds of nuts from a tree in the yard, drove over them to get their outer husk off, filled five-gallon buckets with water and soaked them for a week or so.  I dumped out the black dye and scrubbed each nut to get rid of the black goo on the shell.  I dried them out, cracked each individual nut in a table vice, tossed the fruit and shells into a glass carafe and buried it with a five-year-old malt whiskey from a barrel on the wall.

We were stunned by the result. The whiskey turned black, complex, with a distinctive smoothness.  Wild Foraged Black Walnut Whiskey was born.

That is, until I went to register my formula with the Taxation and Trade Bureau, (TTB--part of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms—the folks who control our formulas, labels, licensure, and facility).

Uncle Sam decided they had approved our whiskey “in error.”  That is, what we were making wasn’t whiskey.  Weird.  Devastating.  We were getting brewers to ferment malted barley into a wash and we were distilling it into whiskey.  Nope.  The Federal Government decided it was something else.  Beer Schnapps perhaps?

A promising segment of our business was cancelled.  We were graciously granted a “use up” period to sell out the inventory that we had—but we had to change the way we produced whiskey.

We did that.  We said goodbye to the brewers.  Now we never run out of whiskey. 

After two years of going around and around with TTB, our Wild Foraged Black Walnut has been approved.  We are going to be releasing a new batch at the one-year anniversary gala of the Tree Museum on January 25^th. 

Fair Game staff members sampling Old Fashioned cocktails made with our cherry and black walnut whiskeys, respectively.

Our Wild Foraged Cherry—that we age on the heart of red cherry wood has not been so lucky.  Still rejected by TTB.   Still working on that one.  We did get formulation and label approval for our sycamore whiskey—that we made for the Sycamore restaurant in town—but they lost the key to their whiskey cabinet and stopped selling it. 

Despite the missed steps, dead ends, and blind alleys, Fair Game is firmly in the malt whiskey business.  It’s our largest selling spirit—in both cocktails and bottle sales.

And then there’s rye.

Rye whiskey is made from the seed of rye grass—a grain.  Let’s take stock:  bourbon is a whiskey made from corn.  Malt whiskey is made from barely.  Rye whiskey is made from rye grass.

In my native Canada the word “rye” is synonymous with “whiskey.”  People will go out on the town, and drink bourbon all night, only to say, “We were drinking rye last night.”

Sidebar:  in Don McLean’s famous song, “American Pie,” he has the line, “Them good old boys were drinking whiskey and rye.”  That’s a continuity problem.  Rye and whiskey are the same thing.

I took an interest in rye when our malt whiskey program was showing promise.  Again, wanting to avoid the juggernaut that is bourbon, I started sampling craft ryes.

Rye is not a popular crop in North Carolina.  I searched far and wide and found a rye grower in neighboring Virginia.  Fair Game’s whole schtick is “hyper local ingredients,” and sometimes Virginia counts.

Rye came from Virginia and was shipped to Sebastian at Epiphany Malting in Durham, North Carolina.  He malted it and shipped it to BMC brewing across the street from me.  They can grind grain and make a wash.  BMC’s owner, John, is a foremost authority on fermentation.

“Malting” means “sprouting.”  Take a seed—a kernel of barley, or corn, or rye, give it the right conditions and it will sprout.  Sprouting is an enzymatic reaction that increases the availability of sugar from the grain.

Makers of alcohol want sugar.  Higher sugar converts to higher yields.

Once the seed sprouts, malters shut down the process with dehydration.  Brewers and distillers are not interested in fermenting micro greens.

When I loaded the still with my hyper local rye wash, it kicked my ass.  It was lively.  Unlike anything I had ever worked with.  It foamed over.  It was stubborn.  It walloped me.

I packed a 53-gallon barrel with rye whiskey, put it on the wall and forgot about.  It would have been fine with me if I never discussed rye again.

But the years passed, and Rob thought it might be time to crack that barrel of rye. Everyone agreed.  And we did what we always do—we brought in samples to taste to compare.

I dreaded the rye tasting.  I was sure that my rye from years ago was going to fail to measure up.  To my surprise and delight it came out of the barrel a bright caramel color with a fantastic nose and great flavor.

It was way better than any of the other rye whiskey samples on the table.

By this time, George Dusek had joined Fair Game. George is a legendary brewer turned distiller who has made a lot more whiskey than I have. Unlike me, George bring pretension to his tastings.  He can talk about “leathery undertones on the back of the pallet.”  Not me.  I can smell something, and taste something and tell whether it will sell vis-à-vis other products in the same space.

During our rye tasting, George turned to me and asked, “What was the grain bill for this?”  A “grain bill” is the list of ingredients.  When we say, “Bourbon is made from corn,” the definition is 51% corn.  The rest can be rice, or wheat, or barley or any other grain.  Malt whiskey requires 51% malted barley, and any other grains.  Same with rye whiskey:  51% rye grass minimum.

Fair Game Small Batch Malt Whiskey is made from 100% malted barley.  So, when I made our rye, I figured I would do the same.

I told George, “The grain bill is 100% malted rye.” 

George looked at me.  “No one would use 100% rye in the grain bill,” he said.  “That would be too lively to work with…”

Oops.  I didn’t know what I was doing.  And our rye is accidentally extraordinary. Whew.

Fun fact:  One time the Discovery Channel asked if I could be on their “Master Distiller’s” show.  I said, “No thank you.  I’m not a master distiller.”

They said, “But we want to feature you on our show.”

I don’t have a TV.  I don’t watch the Discovery Channel.  And I am the furthest thing possible from a “master distiller.”  I’ve accidentally made a few hit beverages. I asked them to go jump in the lake.

Next time they call we will put George on the line.  He could “wow’ them.