Jacob Rippetoe - Dark Arts Whiskey | Building a Distillery, Castle & Key, Blending, Finishing, MGP & the Future of Independent Bottlers
Off Profile - A Highly Spirited ConversationShow Notes
For our first Off Profile conversation, we sat down with Jacob Rippetoe of Dark Arts Whiskey. We were still figuring out exactly what we wanted this podcast to be, so this one turned into a pretty loose, wide-ranging whiskey conversation. Jacob takes us through his path from Castle & Key to Journeyman, where he helped finish building a distillery and get production running, before eventually joining Dark Arts. We get into blending, finishing, sourcing, what makes MGP so consistently good, how Jacob learned to blend from Brett Connors, and why the whiskey going into a finishing barrel matters just as much as the barrel itself. We also talk about Dark Arts getting into distilling, experimenting with gin and botanicals, dusty whiskey, ideal ages for bourbon and rye, and where American independent bottlers go from here. It is a little rough around the edges, but that is kind of the point. This was conversation number one.
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