I got the call in early January this year. Our supplier of Bourbon Barrel Smoked Pepper informed us that effective immediately, they were no longer going to supply us with this popular product. My first reaction was, “well we’re out of the smoked pepper game…”

Then I looked at the sales numbers and realized how much you all love this pepper and I knew we had to do something…fast!

By the end of February, it arrived. A shiny, brand new Ole Hickory wood-burning, rotisserie smoker.

This piece of machinery is sizable to say the least. It took a few hours for me and most of guys in the back of the house (with the help of one forklift and two pallet jacks) to get this beast off the semi, out of its crate, and maneuvered around a corner and into position in our production area. But we did it, and without any damage to any of us or the beast!

A few days later it would be piped, flued, and ready for its maiden voyage. In the meantime, we needed the right fuel to feed the beast so I journeyed over to meet my new friend Thomas at Rocky Mountain Barrel Company.

Stepping into their warehouse is like stepping back in time. Wooden barrels are everywhere you look, stacked floor to ceiling. They have rum, tequila, chardonnay, and red wine barrels galore. What I was there for was the whiskey barrels and because of all the local distilling going on in Colorado, they had no shortage of them.

Thomas was generous with his time and showed us different options. Within an hour, I had three amazingly aromatic whiskey barrels in the back of my truck.

The road to perfectly cold-smoked pepper was a little bumpy, but in the end, after taming the beast a bit, we prevailed. We were so stoked by the smoky flavor complexities that we developed in our new Whiskey Barrel Smoked Black Pepper that we went ahead and created our own Whiskey Barrel Smoked Sugar too.

Who knows what we’ll smoke next, cinnamon and salts come to mind, but in the meantime, stop in to any of our shops or order online today to give these great new products a try.

Smoke on friends, smoke on.