It began in 2018 when we decided to buy a little bigger house out in the country on a few acres, still in the county Brittany grew up in. Grow a garden. Homeschool our two kids. Participate in farmers markets. 

Brittany actually had a business first, Brook James Designs. She did really great things with painted wood flowers for all occasions, even some really big wedding orders. But shipping costs had slowed it down. 

By then, we had a garden. And I planted way too many hot peppers. Especially since I was the only one who ate them. One of the many things we did with that crop was to try out fermenting hot sauce. 

I made three kinds with different ingredients. They set for a few months and eventually were all blended together. Vinegar is standard for hot sauces, so I went with one of my favorites, unfiltered apple cider vinegar. 

It was good but still needed something. Well, I do live in Kentucky now. What about bourbon? 

Oh. That’s really good. Really really good. Hmm.

By now I had been listening to Jack Spirko yell at me from his podcast for five years to start a business. Maybe this was it? So I ordered some bottles from Amazon and some labels for the printer. I already had an idea for a name. But it was in use. 

Twitter had become my preferred social media. I was mutuals with a guy who only lived an hour away who went by Kentucky Rebel Scum on there. So I gave it a shot. Out of the blue I sent him a message asking him if I could name my hot sauce after him. He immediately agreed, obviously expecting nothing to come of it. He agreed to let me use a picture of him too. 

I bought a cheap laptop and started taking it to work. I spent downtime at my factory job learning how to build a website for Half A Pond Homestead. By then I had made a second small batch that was ready. We printed off some labels. And ended up with about 50 bottles total.

Oh wait, what about Half A Pond? Where did that come from? 

When you submit your formal notice of intent to homeschool in Kentucky, you are required to give your homeschool a name for whatever reason. The property we had bought it the country had a very small pond that sat right on the property line with a hay field. Brittany came up with Half A Pond Homeschool for the name we had to submit to the state, and so that became the name of our little project. 

Back to the sauce. We had about 50 bottles of KRS Original Sauce, labels, a website, absolutely no permits or licenses at all, and a winning attitude. On March 13 2023 we launched KRS original along with Kentucky Gentleman Beard Oil and Balm. And thanks to retweets from Tuck (the guy on the bottle) and other friends; we actually sold some. In fact, we sold out two and a half weeks later.

Not bad. 

Bigger batches were made. People kept raving about it. Blackberry Skirmish was introduced in May. By the end of the year we were doing two or three five gallon buckets every couple months. Sauce was in stock and it was a nice little side hustle. We still had less than 1000 followers on Twitter. 

Things cruised along like that in early in 2024 also. In late March we introduced KRS Hot Sorghum and Green River Ghost. Then came May 26th. I was coming in to the factory for night shift and my phone started blowing up. I saw a whole lot of Twitter notifications and a new order also. I clicked on the order first and saw the name. 

Andrew Gruel. 

Chef. Andrew. Gruel. 

I opened up Twitter to see that a longtime mutual, Jonny, had mentioned KRS in a comment on one of Chef’s posts and he replied saying he would try it plus a screenshot of his order. Wow. I packed that order fast. He had ordered five bottles of Original. I gave him those plus two Blackberry, two Hot Sorghum, and a Ghost. And beard oil and balm. Send it all, why not. Maybe he’ll post something.

It didn’t take long to find out. On Friday May 31st, I left day shift at the factory just in time to catch our son’s t-ball game. Around 7:30 while still at the park and the game in progress, Chef Gruel made the post that changed everything. He called it one of the best hot sauces he had ever had. 

And we blew up. Orders started flying in, but only for a few minutes. We were cleaned out of the 40 or so bottles we had at the time. We gained a few thousand followers, all ready to try KRS. And we had maybe 15 gallons of mash that wasn’t even ready yet. 

All while still operating completely renegade. We had to decide pretty much immediately whether to continue. If we did, we had to get legal. Brittany and I talked about it. I had looked up the basics of what it would take by then. I talked to Tuck and the other fellas in the GC. But I gave Brittany the absolute veto option. 

Because I had actually tried to quit already. A couple months before Chef made his purchase and post, I had told her I was considering scaling it back if not stopping altogether. I was spending a lot of time doing it (that’s funny now) and thought the little hobby might have run its course. But she said no, she wanted me to keep it up. And she did not approve of quitting this time either. 

So away we went. We kept making and bottling sauce at home while taking a crash course in acidified food manufacturing. The first step was to get a workspace that would pass inspection. We needed a commercial kitchen. The closest shared use kitchen was in Louisville, so that wasn’t an option. We kept our eyes open for something that would work while we kept making sauce.

We learned quickly that we had serious demand. We released the next batch we had on June 20th. We had 300 bottles and they sold in 20 minutes. We released batches, or drops as they came to be called, every month or so for the rest of the year, selling out each time. For the Holidays, we came up with a Spiced Cranberry Holiday Edition of KRS and made up a Christmas package. And we just kept selling out of everything we made. 

In July of 2024 we finally found our kitchen. A guy I worked with owned a small restaurant space and was renting it to a person we knew that was opening a bakery there. She had been our wedding photographer. Small towns, right? Moe, the landlord, pitched us the idea of sharing the space. This would be allowed by the state, as long as we operated during different hours. And we could get our license. We agreed.

Another highlight of that fall was a big share on Twitter from someone that I, as a lifetime weather nerd had been a big fan of for a long time, Storm Chaser Reed Timmer. Reed made his famous Dominator Spaghetti and filmed a video topping it with Kentucky Rebel Scum. Swoon.

In between continuing to make sauce and selling out, the holidays, and shipping it all, getting the license was a process. We hit roadblocks that we couldn't find answers to. We had to have friends get in touch with friends to call state offices in Frankfurt just to get simple answers. 

To fund this expansion, we held a Give Send Go fundraiser in October. Incredibly, we raised $13,000 mostly from online supporters who had never met us, and many who had never even gotten the chance to try KRS yet because of the demand. We used that cash to buy a new smoker, pay rent, buy a new blender, refrigerator, misc equipment and ingredients, and pay for the lab testing required. 

But we finally did it on February 4th 2025. We passed our inspection and became a licensed acidified food manufacturer in Kentucky. 

We kept making sauce. And kept selling out.

The next surprise came at the end of March when our partner at the shop decided to pull the plug on her bakery. We hated to see it happen, but it became a positive for us. We were able to buy some of the equipment already there and once solo in the shop, we were able to have all the time available to produce KRS we needed. And we began making plans to open it up for retail and some food and desserts also. 

That about catches it up. We’re still planning on opening the shop to the public, we just haven’t gotten there yet. But it’s coming. 

It’s been a wild ride so far, but it isn’t close to over yet. There are more big things coming soon to Kentucky Rebel Scum.

=Travis