Guest

I'm John Jeffrey, I'm head distiller of Bently Heritage Estate Distillery. I'm a food chemist. You could do anything from making Juicy Fruit flavor for gum, to helping design industrial bakeries, to building and running distilleries. I'm not actually the person who decided to be a master distiller and then work my way there. I had graduated from high school and was kinda bumming around trying to figure out what to do with myself. A lot of my friends were musicians, and I had gone to school for sound engineering. Cuz I was sure that being a musician and a sound engineer is what I wanted to do. But I had always been athletic, and I did gymnastics when I was younger, and athletic physiology and training, and that stuff. Just kinda captured my imagination for a while. So I did an undergraduate degree in kinesiology with a focus on exercise physiology. I was a personal trainer. I did physical therapy. And I had grown very interested in food science and food chemistry, and I found a professor who was running a program to do agricultural economic development. Working with farmers to build distilleries, or to do wineries and breweries, and so I talked him into letting me do it with him. I don't really believe that there are many people in the world who find the one glorious thing that they'll never tire of. You can totally do stuff for a while and quit. Quitting is a great skill to go do something else that inspires you. 

If you're interested in something, find the people who are involved in that thing and reach out to figure out how you can work together. People are always willing to work with you if they know that you'll put in the hard work to learn, grow, and develop whatever it is you're working on. For my industry specifically, I suggest that you read a lot of books and get to know process and the industry. Know it better than everyone else, be passionate and knowledgable, and let that show.

I was working in real estate in Chicago when the housing market collapsed. At the same time, I was tired of living in such a huge city with my young kids. So, my family and I moved and I pursued a career change.

I had to leave my family behind in Chicago for 6 months while I figured out graduate school in Michigan. We've also had to move around a lot because of the nature of my job. It gets hard but I'm now at a job where I can remain in place for a while.

I help to run and troubleshoot our distilling equipment. I also spend a lot of time making sure my teams know how the equipment works to make the same product every day. When my teams are ready, I spend time giving them the creative confidence they need in order to design products rather than just making products on equipment they already know how to operate. When I get calls from our sales team about forecasted sales, I plan the corresponding production, down to how much grain we need to plant.

Master Distiller

That's a big risk. It's not okay to make mistakes.

John Jeffery

About John

John Jeffery

About John

Related Videos