bourbon mash bill, and Harvest Rum, a spirit distilled from sorghum molasses. The distillery also offers contract production, creating custom-formulated whiskeys for clients around the world. By capacity, Wilderness Trail is the 14th largest producer of bourbon in the nation, and the production floor is a virtual showcase for the insights Pat and Shane gleaned from all those years on the road. “During our careers, we’ve learned best practices around the world,” says Shane. “So we kind of created a melting pot, combining all these little bits and pieces that aren’t found in any one place other than Wilderness Trail.” That translates to a technical approach that elevates scientific rigor and energy efficiency alongside traditional techniques. That dedication to doing things a little differently starts at the very beginning. Wilderness Trail uses exclusively Kentucky-grown grains sourced from nearby Caverndale Farms. Uniquely, it’s a seed farm, not just a commodity producer, which means Caverndale is able to provide extremely high-quality grain on a very consistent basis. “That means our whiskey is very consistent batch to batch,” explains Shane. “Grain out of an elevator could be a mix of dozens of farms. We’re using the same grain grown on the same bit of ground that we were using five years ago.” Once those grains arrive at the distillery, they’re treated with extra care. Shane and Pat use an infusion mashing process borrowed from the world of beer. “We don’t like putting excessive heat on our grains because that will degrade them,” says Shane. Instead of boiling their mash, Wilderness Trail starts with water at exactly 191˚ F, then adds their grains to begin the infusion. Water chillers successively step the mash down to lower temperatures, ensuring saccharification without the chemical changes that can accompany Maillard reactions. Only at the end of the process does the glycol chiller kick on, resulting in significant energy savings. Rather than a traditional sour mash technique, Wilderness Trail uses a sweet mash, giving the distillers more control over the bacterial content of the ferment. “The story about sour mash is that distillers use it to keep contaminating bacteria in check so ultimately they might have a more consistent product,” explains Shane. “But in reality, what we find is the only thing consistent is inconsistency, batch to batch, within a sour mash operation.” Again, they looked to the beer world for inspiration, installing a steam sanitizer that allows them to sanitize everywhere that contacts mash — vessels, lines, and pumps — to guard against inadvertent bacterial contamination. That’s not to say bacteria have no place in a distillery. “There’s a lot to be said about how contaminants produce flavor, in a lot of cases really good flavor,” explains Pat. “But it’s a poorly understood thing. Most distilleries have no idea what type of bacterial counts they have and how that’s affecting flavor and yield.” In an effort to capture the rich flavors and textures that bacterial contaminants can create, Wilderness Trail makes a kind of aftermarket sour mash inoculant, combining lactobacillus delbrueckii, a lactic acid bacteria found in yogurt that’s often used for lowering pH, with other microbes chosen for their aroma and flavor contributions, then dosing their sweet mash with the concoction. Shane says their
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