Our Process
You want to know what makes an 11Bucks pour shake hands with your taste buds? Here’s the play-by-play, straight and simple.
Grain to Glass
We start with non-GMO corn, rye, and malted barley from family farms less than 100 miles away. The grains arrive in the morning and hit the roller mill before lunch. We mash with pure spring water, cool to pitching temp, and drop in a proprietary yeast that took us five years to perfect. Fermentation runs six days, slow and cold, so every batch keeps its natural sweetness.
Next comes the 1,200-gallon Vendome copper pot still. We take two passes only; anything harsher gets cut away. The clean hearts flow into new American oak barrels that have air-dried outdoors for three full years and carry a #3 or #4 char, depending on the target flavor.
Gold Reserve
This is our baseline beauty. The whiskey rests a minimum of six years in the coolest corner of the stone rickhouse. We proof it to 90 with gravity-fed spring water, then non-chill filter so you see a faint natural haze at fridge temps. Result? Toasted honey, soft spice, easy finish.
Apex Strength
Exact same mash, but the barrels sleep higher up where summer heat hits hardest. After five to seven years we taste every barrel; only the top 10 percent pass. No water touches it after that. What you get is natural barrel proof, usually 115–122. It roars with dark caramel and bold pepper, yet lands silky.
XI Imperium
Made once a decade. We pull the best eleven barrels from our first rickhouse row, marry them, and finish the blend for six months in extra-old cognac casks. Bottled at 100 proof, each run yields exactly 1,111 hand-numbered bottles. Think dried figs, orange oil, and a finish that hangs around like a good story.
Final Touch
Every cork gets a micro-engraving of the battered $10 and $1 bills that sparked it all. That’s your proof our process never cuts corners. Just grain, time, oak, and a whole lot of patience. Pop a bottle and taste the work.
