- Will you consider this?

You have a handle on a handle of whiskey, how to produce it.

That is so you relocate and start the process in central Illinois.

There's a central Illinois distillery with an old family recipe that intrigued a now relocated entrepreneur.

But the hurdles that have been overwhelming or may have been more overwhelming for some didn't deter his spirit to make spirits.

I'm Christine sack Edmonds.

And thank you for joining me in welcoming Andy Ferris and his sidekick Augie from JK Williams, distilling how are you today?

- I'm well Christine thank you Good.

Good, good.

Well, first of all, tell us a little bit about yourself.

You're not from central Illinois.

You're from - Not at all.

I'm from, there's a long story.

We quick Queens, New York, originally new Orleans Kansas city till I was about 12 and then Minneapolis.

And so, - all right so let's spend a little time in Dallas for two years.

- So, but you don't have the Queens accent.

So you left there early enough.

- No more Minnesota people think I'm Canadian.

I think most of us you got that and build a Minnesota, right?

- So you were in Minnesota.

What were you doing?

- So.

I had been in the it industry selling networking equipment for many many years and ended up retiring once which I thought I would lose weight and my golf game would improve.

Neither happened.

And I ended up, I ended up moving to Dallas for two years and I I had been really interested in the distilling industry and had consider myself were considered at the time whiskey and bourbon aficionado and had attended and mergers and acquisitions conference on distilleries in Minneapolis in 2015.

My name was on a list from that somewhere.

And I got contacted about a distillery that was for sale.

And, and I said, well, I'd be interested.

Where is that Peoria, Illinois?

- And then you said, where is that?

- Well, I went to school at university of Wisconsin in Madison so I knew it was close.

I just had never been here before.

So I came up here for a number of times and worked on it.

The deal kind of faded, it collapsed.

And then in the fall of 2018, it resurfaced.

And we came here again in January of that year to check out the town and love it.

And being a Midwesterner I was really happy to be back in the Midwest.

Dallas is - a comfort zone.

- Dallas is booming and it's great and everything but just a big concrete jungle, - it's a lot of concrete.

- So I really feel at home the transition was very easy, you know, in living in PRN.

- Right.

- And moving in - Good for you.

Well, so you didn't really go looking per se at that time you were doing IT also down in.

- IT in Dallas yeah - Okay.

And then it just sort of fell in your lap.

That's one of those circuitous kind of - It's a little serendipity.

I, and I just came up here and I really liked the area we got and I'm not afraid of the cold at all, but we came up here in January of 2019 to see if we like it.

And it happened to be in the fifties During that week.

- Perfect.

- So I said This climate is pretty decent up here.

And so we ran into a polar vortex the following week after we left.

But no, I really said, you know, before we do this let's go check it out.

And, and we've really fell in love with it.

- And your wife partnered with you - Wife, Partner after she said over my cold dead body am I moving to Peoria She then came here and she said I absolutely love this area.

And, you know, found the home that we love and have have made friends very easily.

And so, oh, there's Augie.

Augie's trying to get off, get back up here.

- Augie is he is also an owner.

He he's, well, he, he just, he let him go check out some stuff, - check out.

Yeah.

The concrete floors so much better.

- It's more comfortable.

- Yeah, exactly.

This thing.

These can heat up.

So how did you go about getting the recipe made?

The distillery was for sale?

So that's all the equipment - So the distillery was there.

We, we purchased all the equipment, everything the inventory.

And so, and we're, we're now back in production today.

And so we're using the exact same recipes as they were doing before for both of these.

And we've got some new new products coming out that I think will be really cool for the area.

We're doing a lot with everything I think of is kind of elemental.

So stormy river rye, gold Zephyr bourbon.

Our next we've coming out with a wheat whiskey in about 90 days called the bridge series.

And it's got a rendering of the Murray baker bridge and then with puree in the background and we've got we've we'll feature that on our on pretty much every release that we have.

And I've got a very cool concept that I don't really have much to tell today but there's a cool announcement coming on.

Our gin release where we're featuring in a historic home from Peoria - Gin and vodka too - Vodka is coming out as well.

So all in about 90 or 120 days we'll have some additional features.

And, and so anyway so we all the equipment that we purchased we have since moved, it took us the, it took us a long to get everything we moved from east Peoria.

- And at first, you wanted to be in the warehouse district.

- That was our initial thought.

And I just, in terms of expandability and future, and.

Just and all that we need, we ended up focusing on an industrial building that has all the expansion that we need.

And we've opened a tasting room there.

This was on the north side of town.

And with the thought that we'll have a separate what we'll calling our homeplace experience down at the riverfront, which is in development right now I can't announce it yet but we've been working hard to bring that to fruition and it will be really cool.

I, I hate to see empty buildings that was surprised to see empty buildings on the riverfront here because so many towns have it's the center of their city.

It's the heartbeat.

And it certainly was here.

That's what built this city - Right?

Yeah, exactly.

Well, yeah.

All the distilling.

So you learned a lot about the history of Peoria as well.

- I went into a crash course.

I, I think the librarian laughed at me a little bit.

I had about 10 books.

I checked out from the library and I've read up quite a bit on the history and it's an amazing history.

And it's one that when I think about what we're doing today it is always with a nod to the past and then with our contemporary spin on that.

So it's just very important to me to not forget about the history.

We tell people in Louisville, for instance, no we were the whiskey capital of the world.

They said, what?

So it's that, that history has been lost a little bit to the sands of time.

- Yes.

And so I think it's important to try to revive that there was a real spirit here in town that I love.

And I love to go research it and look into it more - Now, I know that the Williams, they had their grandfather's recipe, I guess he was a bootlegger a great grandfather.

- Great, great grandfather.

- Great, great.

Okay.

And he was a bootlegger - Yes and I, he was a distiller.

And then when prohibition hit, he became a bootlegger.

But what I love about this story is it's legit.

So many brands out there, you know Colonel this and col. You don't know if it's a fictional character or not.

- Right.

- It's so cool that this JK Williams was a real guy.

And, you know, we honor him.

We were using the same recipes as he used.

And you know, we've been winning awards F we haven't been we have not won.

We've won on ward at every practition we've gone into.

- Really So that's been really great.

- And then how, so it takes a while for your bourbon and whiskey to age.

Correct.

But gin and vodka won't be That long.

- Well, it could be bottled shortly thereafter.

So once we go into production, it'll be just you'll turn it around very quickly.

We're waiting on more equipment.

We need a bottling line.

This was all bottled up in Milwaukee because no one we didn't have a bottling line here and everyone was making hand sanitizer last summer.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And so, you know, you know, I think we're not alone here.

Everyone got kind of waylaid and you had to change and be, - retool, - retool, and re what are, what are we doing?

How are we doing it?

And so it was a very difficult time to make it through.

And that, to be honest, there were moments.

My wife and I were both very sick with COVID.

She says, she's patient number two - You're number one or - We don't know.

But we, we both had it.

She was a first, they wouldn't test me.

Maybe they didn't have enough tests, but we were really ill. And there were some days that were like, I just we're checking in and can't do this.

And so once you come out of that fog of being sick, I said you know, we moved here to do this.

We're following through, we've put everything into this that we have.

And so it's really important.

I, I, and I I've heard this from other restaurant tours and other entrepreneurs in town, you know, you just find a way to fight through it.

And, and you, you it's about resiliency and, - But you were never even opened it.

At least they had something going for them.

And you had planned to open the right.

- Yeah.

So we really, I mean, I would say we've been delayed at least at least six months, probably more at this point.

I mean, to be almost in June today and to have just opened a couple of weeks ago the tasting room is just amazing to me.

I would've thought this would've been a year ago.

Right.

And so, but it's also about not really having been in the business before you realize everything costs three times as much as you budget for it takes three times as long.

And so - It is what it is.

- Right.

- But you persevered stick to it tiveness and you got her done and the tasting room is gorgeous.

- It turned out great.

- Yeah.

- It's sort of what I what I think of when you go to the, a distillery and I've I've been to many, I've had the good fortune of of traveling around and seeing, Hey, what are people doing?

Right.

What, what should it look like?

And I like the idea of when you go into a place either takes you back in time a little bit.

- And it does, - It's a little bit of a throwback.

It almost looks like a speakeasy in there and we'll do the same thing on, on the riverfront.

It would be very classic.

And I've been to some that are super contemporary.

I love it.

I love that angle too.

I just think of the history of here that you almost want it to look like it's been there for a hundred years.

That's sort of the idea.

- That's very awesome.

And, and so considering this isn't something that you always wanted to do all your life.

You didn't want to grow up and be bottling booze.

Right.

But you have found it very fascinating and made it fun.

- It's, it's just, gotta be fun.

I just, there's a little burnout.

I was nearing the end of my career, just going is this really what I wanna do?

And it is fun.

I think it's fun to help build a brand connect with customers and the public in a way that they're supporting you.

And I, I think of this whole process is a big or it's an ecosystem here that we all live in that we need to support each other.

We need to support the restaurants.

We hope that they carry us in their restaurants.

And so being part of the fabric of the community is really very important to us.

- Well, we have to keep history alive.

You don't, you can't rewrite it just like you said build on the past and that takes you into the future.

- Absolutely.

- And I think it's, it's just important to remind people because it fades so quickly.

And, you know, some people would say, eh, you know that was a hundred years ago or whatever, what, what what's interesting about that.

And I think it's just, it's super interesting.

It's what what made this town and, and people forget - Really got us on the map.

- Right?

- I think my uncle was here when Hiram Walker had a fire or something, or I don't know, but he was staying there.

And he said, a lot of people were down at the river just with bottles and jars and cans trying to eat some of this, some of the runoff.

So we hope that that doesn't happen to you.

Now, you are located out on industrial.

- North industrial road - Currently our tasting room is open Wednesday through Sunday kind of limited hours on Wednesday, Thursday.

And then we open till eight at night on on Fridays also by noon to five on Sundays.

But also by appointment, someone wants to come in and take a tour or buy some product.

They they're welcome to give us a ring - But you're not the only one working the dist distills.

Right.

There's stills.

Yeah.

I mean, you, you hired somebody who had a lot of - We were very fortuitous.

We, we found Jeff Murphy who was with Bayou rum in Louisiana.

And he had been with several distilleries, but he's been he started as a brewer, moved around.

He was in the Navy, moved around.

His wife was in the Navy got his professional start in Singapore brewing.

They, when they got transferred to San Antonio he went into the Stelling.

So he's, he's had a great history.

They were acquired in 2018 and he decided it was time for a change.

And we ran into each other and it's been the best move ever because he's very important to our, to our company.

- Well you were talking also then about bottling and you had to hit the switch set up - We had to ship it ship to Milwaukee - During COVID.

- Right I called all around.

No one had any capacity.

And, and of course we weren't in production yet.

We wanted to make hand sanitizer but it ended up working out really well for us.

We found a bottle or up in Milwaukee who who did it and we were able to get these two products.

- Well, I think I remember that at the original JK, I think they hadn't labeled parties.

I think - They did that and we may revive that - To, to slap the labels on and then feed them pizza or something like that.

- That's exactly it.

I think we may do the same thing.

We've got a really terrific following.

People have been great.

We did a small crowd funding deal where you could put you know, as little as a hundred dollars in and we ended up raising $183,000.

And so there's this crowdfunding.

I feel like we just gained a ton of brand ambassadors for ourselves and people are interested in helping us build and expand.

And I love that aspect of it.

- You have some specialty drinks.

What, in, in your brief time of being open so far, what is the favorite?

I know that there's one named after the mascot over here - The Augie has been incredibly Augie come here.

Oh, he's going to make a reappearance.

Come on.

There's a cocktail called the Auggie - And it's good.

- It is very good.

And it's been one of the most popular, so, and he he gives special pictures when people - Well, that would be a fundraiser in it's, in itself.

- So no, he's been great to have when people come back to see him and we do have, we've got an adjacent lot to our building.

It's three quarters of an acre, and we are very seriously talking about fencing part of that off and having it be a dog park and, and just we're dog friendly.

Anyway, we don't serve food.

So it's, we don't have to worry about health regulations - And you didn't Want to ever serve food or hors d'oeuvres or anything like that - No, I think for us, it's really about focusing on the drinks.

And if people, we have we've had events already and they cater in for those.

And so it works out.

Great.

- What do you think your biggest challenges are ahead?

If anything, have you crossed enough hurdles so far?

- We still have some hurdles ahead of us.

It's never, it's never ending.

There's every time you turn around there's another, another hurdle.

And it's generally the HVAC, the air conditioner went out.

This went out there's things leaking oil and it goes on and on.

And so that's a hurdle, probably distribution.

We've got, we've got the whole state of Illinois now but having that conversation coming off of 2020 most distributors we've talked to were not interested in adding, adding new lines of product.

And so when you try to play, Hey, we're Illinois producer.

Well, yeah, we're so most of those distributors laid off with when the pandemic hit, right.

Probably half their field team, field sales.

So that's been a challenge but slowly as we've won more awards and as we've gotten some recognition and a claim it's easier to have that conversation.

And so I think we'll slowly as we work concentrically outward from Illinois.

It'll probably be Wisconsin next.

My wife's from Madison.

So that makes it really easy.

And we have many friends and connections up there and in Milwaukee and then Minnesota probably is right on the tail of that with with being that my original home state.

And we'll just see how that goes.

And so just as we expand, you just try to add on where it makes sense and add e-commerce as well.

- Well, the best thing is that you're still dreaming and you're still uncovering, you know, new marketing ways to get the word out not only producing, but also then making it - Right.

And I think it's important to listen to what people it's not just me cramming this idea down the public's throats.

I mean, I think it's just for me it's Hey what do people, what do I, what do I hear from people?

What do they want, - What do they want?

- They want gin, they want vodka.

They want grapefruit gin, - Grapefruit gin - We have grapefruit gim coming out, which is which is really awesome.

- Where do you source the grapefruit?

- So it's a, it's a natural additive.

It's all natural.

And a grapefruit gin and tonic with cracked pepper on top could be the drink of the summer.

If we get it out soon enough - Well, that'll be something.

- And then, so you have some challenges and you have some other requests.

What other like wacky requests have you had?

You know, grapefruit gin doesn't sound bad.

- No, I, well, some people miss the old we moved away from the flavored.

You know, some people really love the old JK the like the apple, the apple one.

And some of those it's just to me that didn't have as wide of a market.

It's a little moon shining for me, but that was just me.

And I thought really concentrate on aged these, these products getting them into the barrel aging at four years.

That's, that's the plan.

And then, and then also rambling that off with gin, vodka which Jeff made rum for eight years.

So we'll do, we'll do rom as well.

- Huh?

- So four years.

But like you said, you bought some of, of what they already - We will go, we will end up going through the inventory next year.

So we're, we're trying to stretch that out.

Our next release we spent probably six months tasting source.

There's a whole market of you go out and source from other producers and they've already gotten an inventory.

We spent about six months tasting different whiskeys of what we wanted to blend in with ours.

And so our next series is an American wheat whiskey.

So we sourced 20 barrels of, of a wheat whiskey.

- How big are the barrels?

- 53 gallon barrels.

Okay.

And they just arrived.

So we were getting close.

- Are they Oak?

Are they, it has to go, it has to go into Oak, right.

Or this is this wheat whiskey doesn't have to go into bourbon, has to go into American white Oak.

Okay.

And then we'll blend that in.

So we'll put probably 27% of our product and blend it with 73% of theirs.

And so we, you end up with any lawn gated the hill.

We're calling that the bridge series for a very good reason.

It's bridging us gap, bridging the gap.

And it's also, I like it with the Murray baker bridge.

So, and so yeah, there, there was a time when we'll run out of those products, but you just have to stick to the plan of, of we age everything for years.

That's going to be, that is the plan.

- Yeah.

So you don't want to give in, leave a bad taste in anybody's - Mouth.

No, and I, well, this is one thing I want to say.

We take our quality very, very seriously.

We don't take ourselves very seriously.

Okay.

- Well that's what makes it fun.

Right.

And then for the tasting, so excuse me.

So you and Jeff went to the tastings too so that he could help You figure it out.

- So Jeff has been instrumental in that.

So we, we ship in samples and, you know, we, it ends up you're sampling stuff every day, but it's important.

It's important to get to the quality.

And so the public knows, I feel like we've done a little bit of the heavy lifting for the public.

When they see a bottle from us they know that that's going to be good because, you know primarily Jeff is the expert and then my weighing in on it.

But I said, you know, this is very, very good.

- And it's your reputation on the line.

- Right - What other kinds?

So I know a lot of flavored vodkas are popular too.

You're just going to go straight for a while - Yep.

It could be there've been some very successful brands and it's funny how ubiquitous, like Tito's people order a Tito's martini or whatever.

And so we won't get there obviously, but I think it's you'd have to keep your ears open option open.

What do people ask for?

And we'll see, but I love mixology is really cool.

And it's kind of a lifestyle and - Mare you a masster of that to master of mixology or you're becoming one - Becoming one, - okay.

- But yeah, when it, when you see like trends up there bourbon, it has, has just taken on, I think and I love craft beer, but it's sort of, it's it's a flat marketplace.

It wasn't one that, that we wanted to enter.

So, but we obviously support our local breweries but there's a trend here that is really amazing.

That kids that are now in their twenties are moving a little bit away from beer, and now they they're in the bourbon.

It's a little more fine taste.

And so it's really, it's generational.

This is, this is something that's going to stick around.

And I, I do try to read a lot of different reports about the industry.

And it's really surprising how this is taking hold - A new generation yeah.

- And it's growing at sort of 35% a year or it's forecasted to grow for the next seven years at 35% - Really 35%?

- Yeah.

- Wow.

So you got an adjusted the timing is everything, isn't it?

- Timing is everything.

And you know, I think we it's, it's luck.

It's timing.

It's good fortune, but it's all those things.

You just have to be in the right place at the right time.

You have to meet the right people but you can't do it sitting on your couch.

- Exactly.

Networking.

And then you've had your hurdles and your challenges.

And one of my guests in a previous show called it the great pause.

And, but you could get a lot done during that pause on your own, trying to, once you you and your wife healed from that - What's another thing going back to Augie for a second.

This is funny, the dogs that we run into, they were in quarantine as well.

So you kind of, you know, they, they go crazy when they see each other, now because they haven't had any interaction either.

And so, yeah, we all kind of, everyone just is so ready to get out.

And so I see the excitement and when people get out for the first time in, in months.

And so that's how we felt a little bit last year and you know, we love to travel and you just felt cooped up.

And so - Well thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for finding us and for sharing all of your expertise and your stories.

And I do need to show you at some point we're going to have to get a close above this but Augie has his own business card.

How about that?

He is quite the guy.

So again, thank you very much.

J K distilling, LLC for being here and can't wait to tip a few myself.

- Great, Christine, thank you so much for having us - Well, thank you for joining us on consider this stay safe and healthy.