Pipeman Interviews Forrest Williams of Bulleit at Bourbon & Beyond 2025

0:04 Hi, you have done too. Yes, that's true. For wow, for you you. This is the pipe man here on a bunch of pipe man W four C Y radio, and I'm here. With Forrest Williams from Bullet Bourbon. Nice and okay, I'm really excited. You brought me four different bourbons and whiskeys and all these different flavors. So that's correct. Cool. As we hang out, you're gonna find out my stories are a lot more interesting with the drink in your hands.

0:45 So I had to come well prepared. There you go, So let's start there. Well, let's actually back up. Where did Bullets start? What's the story there? Looking back? Kind of a strange time to have started a bourbon brand. Bullet was founded by a gentleman named Tom Bullet back in nineteen eighty seven, and if you look at bourbon sales nationally, they declined in nineteen seventy two, they declined in seventy three. Every year from seventy two all the way through to nineteen ninety nine, bourbon sales would decline each and every year. So it was obviously something that Tom started as a passion project. It was certainly not jumping on the hype train that Bourbon is happy to be riding these days. Right, And what do you think the difference is that we have it riding high now but declining.

1:30 Then. There are a lot of different reasons that go into it. But at the end of the day, people have found we're making a lot of good stuff here in Kentucky and they want a little part of it in their glass. And you know what I think of I'm like, people are willing to turn off the news and just drink. Oh for sure. Yeah, Like my story is the news is a little bit better with a drink in the head. Yeah, exactly. So what do we have here? You have four different bottles here for sure. So what I've brought for you today are four of our highest end expressions of Bullet. First thing that we're going to be trying is the newer to market Bullet variations. It's called Bullet Single Malt. It is an American single malt whiskey, which is a brand new category, was just approved for sale back in December of twenty twenty four, So this is getting in early on a new American whiskey boom. Then behind that we have Bullet Bourbon tenure. This is a ten year expression of the original Bullet bourbon. A lot of people when they think bullet, they think orange. This is the elevated version of our orange label. A little bit more time in the barrel here in Kentucky to pick up more flavor. Then we've got our bullet Rye ten year, same exact story. Bullet is known well for our Rye whiskey whenever we step outside of bourbon. This is the little bit more time in the barrel variation that sticks with you. And then the last thing that we have is bullet, bottled and bond. The Bottled and Bond Act is one of the oldest laws that governs any food or beverage product, and it means that you're gonna have to have a whole lot of transparency to your bourbon.

2:53 Be opened to brand new distillery down in Shelbyville, Kentucky in twenty seventeen, and this is some of the first stuff off the Still Distillery. Nice. And speaking of transparency, one thing that. I really loved is in a I think it was a press release that was put out, you actually put the ingredients of some of your different flavors. Oh, for sure, so people can buy it online, but they see what is actually in it. Yeah, throughout this whole interview. If you've got any questions about what makes up these whiskeys, I'm more than happy to talk about it. It is pretty cut and dry and something we're proud to be able to share. So my first question for people that don't know, because Kentucky people.

3:37 They know bourbon, Oh we do they know whiskey. I don't know if South Florida people do so much, or California people do so much, or New York people do so. Much as somebody from Kentucky. What's the difference between a mall, a rye whiskey the different types of bourbon and whiskey. So best answer that we might need to back up a second, say what even is whiskey? Yeah? Yeah, there are quite a few different spirits that you can buy on the shelf. Whiskey is one of them, Brandy is another, rum, vodka gin, and every single one of those, with the exception of vodka and gin, are based on what did they start off as. Brandy is going to be a wine that has then been distilled, a rum is going to be sugarcane that has been then distilled, and whiskey is just beer that has been distilled and the biggest separations that come from different varieties of whiskey. Or two, what kind of grain are you using to brew up that initial beer?

4:38 And where did you do it? Bourbon whiskey is a product of only the United States, and here in Kentucky we make a little bit over ninety percent of it. Wow, And what is the difference between bourbon and whiskey? Sure? So, bourbon is a very very specific type of whiskey. It's to use the label Kentucky Straight Bourbon whiskey on your product, you have to jump through more hoops than any other product on your li your shelf. For it to be bourbon, it must first meet all the definitions of whiskey. But in addition to that, it must be made out of at least fifty one percent corn. And then it gets aged in a brand new barrel. So as soon as it goes into that barrel, it will be a used barrel. You can't do bourbon on it again and again has to be made right here in America.

5:18 So and like, okay, I'm looking at your brand of whiskey and bourbon. What makes me? Well, what would be the reason why I would pick yours over anybody else. For sure, So, especially when Bullet launched a really good rule of thumb for the recipe of any bourbon that you're going to run into was about seventy five percent corn, fifteen percent of what they call the flavoring grain or the small grain, which is either wheat or rye in most cases, and the last ten percent was malted barley, which just helps kick off the brewing process back when it's a beer. And when Bullet first showed up, we decided to shake things up. We continually use the term frontier whiskey to describe us. We are always pushing the boundaries of what people are expecting out of a product, and our Bourbon whiskey instead of having that fifteen ish percent rye content, we used twenty eight percent. We nearly doubled the rye content. Well, yeah, and what that's going to lead to if you think about breads, corn bread, very sweet, rye bread, very spicy, it's just going to add a little bit more of that flavor.

6:21 And well, it really took off. Especially in the bartending community, because extra rye adds extra spice, and if you look at a cocktail recipe, there's not too many that call for adding spice to it. So if the whiskey can bring that to the party, then it's going to make a more ill rounded cocktail. So you maybe think of something of some eight. A is not well schooled in whiskey and bourbon, so a rye is made from the same thing. Rye bread is. Absolutely to be a rye whiskey much like a bourbon whiskey. It has to be at least fifty one percent rye. So you're just crossing that barrier. So it couldn't be both a bourbon and a rye at the same time. But so why do you pick a rye opposed to a sour though or uh? And I'm asking us because people with assets or a pumper nickel or whatever.

7:07 Some of the regulations that we have to follow, the grains have to fall into a category called cereal, basically anything that kind of looks. Like grass while growing. And especially in early America when our whiskey traditions were being formed, rye grew really well in northern areas Pennsylvania and Maryland rye we're both really prolific styles of rye in the early days of America. So it's all very tradition based. And why do you think Kentucky is the play that's the home of bourbon and whiskey, and specifically bourbon. To put it simply and boastfully, we do it better than everyone else. But to give a little bit more reason and a little bit more backstory to it, it is because of several different factors. The first and the most common one that you're going to be hearing is about our limestone water. Here in Kentucky, we sit on a gigantic bed of limestone, and that limestone is going to add calcium and magnesium to the water, and it's going to strip the water of iron that really helps the fermentation process. And nowadays we could fix water and add those and we could remove the iron no problem.

8:03 But in very very early America, it just you would accidentally make better whiskey if you were here in Kentucky. And then when you stick it in a barrel, our summer, so they get hot, but not incredibly hot. We hit right around one hundred on our hottest days, and that heat is going to force the whiskey into the wood to pick up a bunch of flavor, but then it cools right back off, which is going to pull it back in and share the flavor with the rest of the barrels. We just are at the intersection of good water and good climate. I love it. And so mister Bullet started this way back when in time when bourbon and whiskey was on the down slope. Why would you start something on the down slope? Well, I mean a lot of different reasons, but the only way that you could really explain it is passion.

8:45 If you want to jump on a sinking ship, you were not doing so because you're trying to hitch a ride somewhere exotic. You are doing so because you're trying to bail the ship out. And not only was able to weather that initial storm. When we introduced our rye whiskey, rye whiskey was kind of a dying breed and it very quickly became the standard for rye whiskeys today. Wow, and what do you think made that transformation? Fertile rye whiskey of rye whiskey was just something people weren't all that familiar with. All of the distilleries that were making rye whiskey were shut down during prohibition. Prohibition curd In. Nineteen twenty and only six licenses were issued nationwide for a medicinal whiskey license, and none of those were in Rye country. So Rye was kind of a dying breed, but certainly something with a little bit of tradition and heritage that we needed to bring back to the world.

9:35 Nice, okay, And so what else do you want to tell the listeners about the background of this whiskey and what has brought us here today? Well, what's brought us here today is we are thankfully right in our own backyard. Our distillery where we make all of our bullet is just about thirty forty minutes down the road from we're in Louisville at bourbonam Beyond in Shelbyville, Kentucky. We make whiskey there and. Bullet love seeing apart of anything that we can do a in our hometown and be supporting artists. We really like to support the music scene, the culinary scene, and Bourbon and Beyond is really the cross roads of all of those. And how long have you been participating in Bourbon and Beyond. We've been with Bourbon and Beyond since it opened up as a festival, which I believe was six or seven years ago.

10:17 Which surprises me that we haven't talked before. I know, but what cool festival, Like what great idea by Danny Wimmer when it first started, like because these aren't the normal festivals for the Danny Wimmer there for sure. It's amazing. Yeah, giving not just the artists but all of the enders participants their own stage. I mean this weekend, Bullet is going to be on the fork and Flask stage. We have Doug Kraigle, who is formerly our lead whiskey educator, but now he's in charge of all of our distilleries here in Kentucky. He's going to be on that stage with Chef Demeris Phillips talking about how Bullet makes the meal. We just have so many opportunities to bring the spirit and show off these products are also rock stars, not just the people on the stage.

10:59 Night and a little tibbit of why people listening should bring Bullet to their dinner. Little tidbit of why they should bring it to their dinner. It goes back to how well these cocktails work out. A little bit of a spice in that cocktail is always going to be missing in that flavor, and a well rounded meal deserves a well rounded cocktail. There it is, There it is, And so let's see what these are all about. Shike, Let's really forget the words. Let's see the action of what these are about. So we're going to do some taste fest in here. Which one are we starting. We're going to be starting with bullet single molt. Again, this is a newer category in American whiskey. Straight American whiskey always has to be aged in a brand new barrel, but malt whiskey isn't something that America is really well known for. It's something that we more associate with the Scotch and Irish whiskies.

11:47 Of the world. So this is taking the idea of a Scotch whiskey but using all of the things that make American whiskey so distinct. The recipe for this is one hundred percent malted barley. We are going to be fermenting it, distilling it, and then throwing it in a barrel and treating it like any other Kentucky bourbon from there, but a little bit different starting point is going to lead to the lightest whiskey in this lineup. This is I always like to think of these in terms of a festival, especially given the fact that we can hear sound check right now. This is if I don't have access to ice and I just want something that's going to be a nice, easy sipper. This is what I'm bringing out into the crowd to listen to a show. Nice, So let's try it. Cheers, cheers. So the nose of this really like kind of a lemon grassy, very floral note, and the finish almost like a chocolatey cereal, just really really easy.

12:36 And it's funny. Yeah you said that because I'm a chocoholic, but I'm not an alcoholic, and I like this because of a chocolate face for sure. And that comes from that malt or to malt grain. You're going to get it wet to begin sprouting, and then you dry it out really quickly. And when you're drying it out, you're toasting that malt, and that brings out these really nice cocoa notes and that really shows through in the whiskey. The next thing that we have here is Bullet Bourbon ten year. This is one of the oldest elevated expressions that we have for Bullet. That time in the barrel is so important to developing a lot of the sweetness and a lot of the color. When it comes out of the still whisky is completely clear. So all the color that you're seeing comes right from that barrel, and us bullet tenure has had enough time in the barrel to pull out a ton of sweetness.

13:23 So for those that don't know, why don't we want it clear? Why do we want it in the barrel? Those of you that don't know, come to Kentucky, come visit us at the distillery, and I'll pour you some whiskey before it goes into the barrel, and you will tell me that the barrel is very important after that. Unaged whiskey to be a. Vodka or a gin, you have to be distilled up to one hundred and ninety proof, which is going to clean up a lot of impurity from the product. To be a bourbon whiskey, you can't distill over one hundred and sixty proof. So there's going to be a lot of things that aren't just alcohol and water in there. Those are the things that are going to be developing into really interesting flavors in that time I'm in the barrel. So unaged whiskey just hasn't have time to mature.

14:03 Let's try it cheers. So the nose of this one lots of vanilla and black cherry. When you take a sip, it has got all really sweet, almost like a crember let sweetness, and you can feel that spice I was talking about with our bourbon rust. I was going to say, too, it feels stronger in my throat. Just a little bit. The American single mole is right at ninety proof. This is ninety one point two, So you're a little bit of a savant picking up that one point two percent different nice. So the next thing we've got here is bullet Rye ten. Bullet Rye, like I said, is the rye that brought Rye whiskey back to the world, and bullet Rye ten is the oldest expression of our bullet rye that we have on the shelves today. The nose of this one, much like the bullet ten here, has a really big caramely sweetness. But rye I always say ryan dry ryme for a reason. So with that dryness of the rye, you're not getting nearly as much sweetness, and you're gonna get a lot of these big buttery oak notes from that time that it's spent in the wood, and again relating everything to a festival, this is if I'm not allowed to bring a drink in the crowd.

15:05 The finish on this one will stick with me long enough to listen to the whole show and still have a little bit of a whiskey on the tongue. Nice cheers, cheers. So very very peppery. It's got these minty notes to it, and oh yeah, and the finish just will not quit. This is something that really sticks with you. I like to pair this one with a book on a Saturday afternoon, take a sip every chapter as I'm reading that it has time to breathe and open up, and every sip will flavor wise stick with me through the chapter, and every sip's going to be a little bit different as it has time to open up. The last thing that we have in our tasting lineup here is bullet, bottled and bond. So the Bottle and Bond Act is one of the oldest. Laws governing food and beverage products, am out in eighteen ninety seven, nine years before we even had an FDA, and the Bottle and Bond Act is all about transparency on the back of the bottle it claims exactly where it was distilled, which is at our distillery and shelby the Kentucky. This is some of the first stuff off of that still, and you're also only allowed to use spirit from one season. But this is a snapshot of how Kentucky was in twenty seventeen. So I know we didn't get to meet at one of the earlier Bourbon and beyonds, but this is how things were going back where I work. Nice cheers, cheers, a ton of sweetness.

16:20 It's so funny that I relate this one to the second one, and the third one closer to the first one. So it's no mistake that you're relating these two together. A bottle of the Bond and the Bullet Bourbon Tenure both use the same recipe of about two third scorn one third rye, so they start off with the same base. The Bullet Bourbon ten year has been in that barrel a little bit longer, and the barrels are mingled together by our excellent blending team to produce a really, really consistent flavor. The Bullet bottle and Bond same recipe going in, but instead of lingling a bunch of different barrels together from different years to achieve a consistent flavor. We're bringing you a little snapshot of how it is in Shelbyville, Kentucky. Nice.

17:00 And so you're talking before about them coming to your distillery doing tasting. How do they go about that? Where do they go to sign up for that? So if you go to let dot com, there is a link right to our distillery. You can make reservations all in advance. If you just happen to be passing through Kentucky or driving along the Bourbon Trail, you can detour and we have an excellent bar program. We can do tasting, so you get to take the full tour. We do a sensory tasting where we take over the lights and sounds of the room and really try to round out the entire tasting experience with all of the other intangibles. That are hard to describe. And you know, it's one thing to say this is like a dim rainy afternoon, but it's another thing to turn it into a dim rainy afternoon while you're tasting the whiskey and put you right there.

17:46 Yeah, that's way cool. Yeah, And so tell us a little bit about what you've been doing here special at Bourbon and Beyond. Here at Bourbon and Beyond, we've got quite a bit going on. In the general old Mission footprint. Closest to the one hundred proof stage, we have a bar that is serving cocktails. We have two, the Bullet Buzz, which is a bullet rice spicy honey and lemon cocktail kind of like a hot a little bit of a spicy version of a bee's knees. And then we also have a BlackBerry lemonade made with our Bullet Bourbon, so that's more of the freshing cocktail. In that same area, we also are offering flights where you can try each one of these in the same lineup that Iman and I just tasted them and got a one and three chance based on who's working. If I'm gonna join you for those and aalk you through it the same way that you just heard.

18:34 There you go. We've also got at Fork and Flask stage that tasting with Doug Kraigel and Damarus Phillips, so that'll be a bullet and bullet and cocktail bearing. And then we have all of the pores that we just had here available at the Big Bourbon bar, so we've got a quite big presence and happy with everything that we're doing here. We would you say it's your biggest reasons to associate yourself with Bullet. There are quite a few reasons. My earliest involvement in the whiskey industry came with Behind the Bar, and being behind the Bar, Bullet is of one of the brands that will reach out and try to find bartenders. Like I said, Bullet is always in supportive artists, and it is no secret to us that the people working behind the Bar are also artists, and Bullet reached out ten years ago. I've been with them and I got to work at the distillery and do a little bit of everything, and I've really enjoyed watching this brand grow and enjoy having a voice at the table for where the brand is today.

19:27 Nice answer. Anything else you want to add that's coming up for you guys in the future, in the near future, far. Few There's not too much that I'm able to announce at the moment, but American Single Molt is a brand new category is of December twenty twenty four, and I hope that we're going to have some exciting stuff in that category and really push the frontiers of whiskey in that new category. Nice and tell everybody how they reach out to you guys on the web, on socials all that stuff. Yeah, on the web, you can find us at Bullet dot com, all of the social pages. We are just at Bullet and we are at festivals all over the place. So if you don't want to reach out to us over the internet, feel free to go support your local music and hopefully you'll catch us there.

20:07 And for those listening and aren't here at Bourbon and Beyond, might be at Louder than Life next week, will you be there? We will be at Louder than Life, but in a more limited capacity than Bourbon and Beyond because there's less opportunity for Bourbon to be the rock star that is, for some serious rockin Yeah, there you go. Well you are seriously rocking. Is there anything else you want to share with the listeners we haven't covered already? No, I think that checks everything. Just again. Please come out and support live music and we'll see you. There and buy Bullet and by Bullet for sure. Thanks for being on the Adventures by Man. Happy to be here, Bye man. Thank you for listening to the Adventures of plate Man on w for CUI Radio.