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How Much Pappy Van Winkle is Left After 23 Years in a Barrel?

The most sought-after bourbon in the world, Pappy Van Winkle 23-year-old, begins life as 53 gallons of new-make whiskey at 114 proof.

What's left in the barrel after 23 years is a mere 14 gallons of bourbon at around 135-140 proof. What makes it into the bottle is even less.

So I decided to run the numbers on how much Pappy Van Winkle is left in the barrel every year after evaporation (aka the "angel's share").

According to Harlen Wheately, Master Distiller at Buffalo Trace, the angel's share is 10 percent for the first year (because whiskey is absorbing into the wood of barrel as well as evaporating), then 4 percent for the next 8 years after that, then around 3 percent per year after that.

(They store the future Pappy in barrels in the parts of the warehouse with the least evaporation as they know they want it to age for a very long time.)

Pappy Van Winkle 23 Countdown
Year	Angel's Share (Percent)	Math	Total
1	0.1	53 -(.10)*53	47.7
2	0.04	=D3-(D3*B4)	45.792
3	0.04	=D4-(D4*B5)	43.96032
4	0.04	=D5-(D5*B6)	42.2019072
5	0.04	=D6-(D6*B7)	40.513830912
6	0.04	=D7-(D7*B8)	38.89327767552
7	0.04	=D8-(D8*B9)	37.3375465684992
8	0.04	=D9-(D9*B10)	35.8440447057592
9	0.04	=D10-(D10*B11)	34.4102829175289
10	0.03	=D11-(D11*B12)	33.377974430003
11	0.03	=D12-(D12*B13)	32.3766351971029
12	0.03	=D13-(D13*B14)	31.4053361411898
13	0.03	=D14-(D14*B15)	30.4631760569541
14	0.03	=D15-(D15*B16)	29.5492807752455
15	0.03	=D16-(D16*B17)	28.6628023519881
16	0.03	=D17-(D17*B18)	27.8029182814285
17	0.03	=D18-(D18*B19)	26.9688307329856
18	0.03	=D19-(D19*B20)	26.1597658109961
19	0.03	=D20-(D20*B21)	25.3749728366662
20	0.03	=D21-(D21*B22)	24.6137236515662
21	0.03	=D22-(D22*B23)	23.8753119420192
22	0.03	=D23-(D23*B24)	23.1590525837586
23	0.03	=D24-(D24*B25)	22.4642810062459

According to those calculations, there are 22.4 gallons left in the barrel, but this assumes that the alcohol percentage stays the same as it started.

The actual final proof is around 140 (70% ABV), so the 14 gallons that Wheately reports are equivalent to about 17.2 gallons at the original proof of 114 (57% ABV). That's a lot closer to the calculated number.

Wheately filled me in on some other practical factors for the math discrepancy.

“We have done a lot of proprietary work to determine the real proof drop while the barrels are aging so I wouldn’t want to reveal all our info…. (but)

While processing such small batches you get quite a bit of loss during the bottling process during the filtration process.

Also, during the course of 23 years there tends to be other factors such as leaks that increase the loss and are difficult to put numbers to.

A typical/perfect 23 year old barrel of wheated bourbon should yield about 14 wine gallons with about a 1-2 gallon loss during bottling which gets it down to 12-13 wine gallons recovered.”

So when you're paying for a bottle of Pappy Van Winkle 23 even at non-surge pricing, you're not just paying for the raw materials used to make and the time spent to age what's in that bottle, you're also paying for the raw materials and aging of 39 gallons of bourbon that evaporated before it got to the bottling facility, and a total of nearly 80% of the original juice that didn't make it into the bottle.

January 15, 2014

Gamsei, A Hyperlocal Molecular Mixology Bar in Munich

I've been bursting waiting for the Saveur 100 issue to come out so I could write more about Gamsei, a bar I visited in Munich this fall and included in the January issue of the magazine.

The story is now online at Saveur.com, with a lot more info below.

Gamsei comes from Matt Bax, the founder/co-founder of Der Raum and Bar Americano in Melbourne and Tippling Club in Singapore.

From the write-ups of Gamsei, it sounded like a place with a lot of rules (you have to wear slippers inside, no sugar in the drinks, no photos allowed) but much of that was either incorrect or more like a general policy than a rule.

The seating in Gamsei is on bleacher-style steps on either side of the central "bar", which is more of a low counter like you'd find in a science lab. Those slippers are for people who sit on the upper levels, so their muddy/wet shoes won't drip on the people below them.

I had also heard all about the hyper-local vision of the bar but not about the high-tech aspect of it. I was expecting a simplistic Japanese take on in-season cocktails, so the rotovap and liquid nitrogen came as a pleasant surprise.

Really, what Bax has done is just taken the idea of preserving local bounty and given it an exciting update. The bartenders forage in the forests (he said he checks with a plant expert to make sure certain things aren't poison before using them) and buy stuff at farmers' markets in season and use them fresh or preserve them using old-world techniques like fermentation, syrup-making, kombuchas, drying, etc. as well as new-world techniques like running infusions through the Rotavap so that they never spoil and flash-freezing other ingredients with liquid nitrogen.

As mentioned in the story, my favorite drink was the Lindenbluten, a local "lime blossom" (not the citrus tree) leaf and flowers frozen into an ice cube, and that ice cube used to chill and flavor house-carbonated local vermouth. Simple, elegant, beautiful. (But a terrible picture, sorry.)

At service, you get a mix of simple-looking drinks as well as some of the tricks you might expect from Bax – liquid nitrogen, beer foam, a drink in a flask. I had one that came with a a puff of cotton candy ("candy floss" to our European friends) that you use to sweeten a cocktail made with caraway liqueur, brandy, and riesling.

That puffy thing is cotton candy that you add to the cocktail to sweeten it.

All-in-all, the philosophy isn't that complicated and the rules aren't that strict. It's a unique set-up for a cool bar concept. Absolutely worth a visit when you find yourself in Munich. (And Munich is pretty darn worth a visit on its own- I've gotta get back there soon.)

Here's the menu from that day:

The arrows direct you from lighter starter drinks to richer heavier ones.

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January 14, 2014
A Wide Range Of Amari & Cocktails In Which To Use Them in Saveur Magazine
If you hadn't heard, your host Camper English is the Contributing Drinks Editor at Saveur Magazine now. Hooray!

The current January issue is the annual Saveur 100: "Our favorite places, tools, ingredients, cookbooks, recipes, restaurants, and more."

I have two small bits in the magazine. The first is on Amari (plural of Amaro) and cocktails to use them in.

Read the story with tasting notes here and the cocktail recipes are in slideshow format here.

For the cocktail recipes, I sourced them from:
- Max Grecco of Vasco in Sydney, Australia
- Renato “Tato” Giovannoni of Florerèa Atlántico in Buenos Aires
- Jackson Cannon of Island Creek Oyster Bar in Boston
- Patrick Poelvoorde of San Francisco's Park Tavern
Thanks fellas.

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January 13, 2014
Distillery Visit: Bushmills in Ireland

A while back I enjoyed a brief visit to the Bushmills Irish Whiskey distillery, located at the northern tip of Northern Ireland.

Bushmills is located super close to the Giants' Causeway, a natural phenomenon that brings tons of tourists through town every day. Pretty much all the tours also stop at Bushmills, whether that's for a full distillery tour or just a meal in the visitors' center restaurant. 92,000 people visited the distillery in 2012.

Bushmills doesn't have column stills; all the whiskey made here is triple distilled from 100% malted barley. (Thus the same as single-malt scotch except that it's distilled an additional time.)

The barley for Bushmills is grown in Cork, down in the south of Ireland. It is malted and ground into a grist. The water for fermentation comes from a tributary of the Bush River nearby.

Like single-malt scotch, the malted barley has added hot water to it in a mash tun, and then its drained. This is to keep the fermentable sugars in the water but get rid of the solid bits that gum up the works. It is transferred to a wash back, where it is fermented with brewer's yeast for about 50 hours. The resulting beer is around 8% ABV.

The beer is then distilled. Bushmills has 10 pot stills (2 wash stills and 4 each feints and spirit stills) in a surprisingly small, crowded room. According to my guide, the whiskey is distilled up to 25-30% ABV on the first distillation, then 70% and 84% after the second and third distillations.

Like scotch whisky, they redistill the heads and tails in the next batch so there is no waste. The "pot ale" that is the leftover stuff from the first distillation is made into a syrup and sold for animal feed. The spent barley grain is also sold for animal feed, as it is at most grain distilleries.

The water used to dilute the whiskey to final bottle strength is reverse osmosis-filtered municipal water. They put whiskey into the barrel at 63% ABV.

Four different types of barrels are used to age Bushmills: ones that formerly held bourbon, oloroso sherry (from the Paez bodega), port, or Madeira. They said they reuse their ex-bourbon barrels 3 times before they're no longer useful.

While Irish whiskey by law must be aged a minimum of 3 years, the youngest Bushmills is aged for six, and Black Bush is aged for eight. Both the Original Bushmills and Black Bush are blended Irish whiskeys; made with a blend of triple distilled malt whiskey produced on-site and column distilled whiskey purchased from Midleton (but aged on-site here at Bushmills).

Original Bushmills is 55% single-malt and 45% grain whiskey.

Black Bush is about 80% single-malt and 20% grain whiskey. It is aged in around 70% ex-sherry casks and the rest in ex-bourbon.

The rest of the line are single-malts. The 10-year-old is about 90% ex-bourbon aged, with the rest sherry.

The 16 year old Bushmills is aged in bourbon and sherry casks in equal volumes. Then the whiskey is blended and finished in ex-oirt barrels fro 6-9 months.

The 21-year-old is also made up of whiskey aged in bourbon and sherry casks for 19 years, then finished in Madeira casks for 2 years.

All Bushmills is bottled at 40% ABV and chill-filtered. The only exception to that was the 1608 that is no longer available.

Bushmills sells around 880,000 cases annually, with the US its biggest market. They have 80 acres of land on which the barrels age. As it's such a small distillery, they distill 24/7 throughout the year with the exception of 2 maintenance periods.

No pictures were allowed inside the distillery, sorry for the lack of razzle-dazzle.

January 10, 2014
Why Add Sugar to Rum When it’s Made from Sugar in the First Place?
As mentioned in yesterday's post, rum is distilled from any sugar cane derivative like fermented fresh cane juice or molasses. But some producers add sugar to their finished rum after distillation.

Adding sugar to any spirit can soften it and hide some flaws, but if you look at the (allegedly) sweetened rums in this post on RefinedVices.com, you'll notice two general patterns among the rum bottlings that allegedly have sugar added:
1. They come from big companies that shouldn't need to add sugar to cover a bad distillate. They know how to distill.
2. They're aged rums, rather than white rums.
Well it turns out that adding sugar to spirits also gives them the guise of age.

Ian Burrell, global rum expert and founder of Rum Experience, commented on the original Facebook post of the sugar values with some really interesting information. He wrote:

I recently did a private tasting for 50 consumers with two rums both finished in sherry casks. One was notably sweeter than the other. When I asked the guests to let me know which they felt was the oldest, 80% said the sweeter one. When I asked which they prefer 60% said the sweeter one.

I then gave them a 3rd rum, which they were unaware was actually Rum no.1 (the dryer rum) with a touch of sugar added to it. All agreed that this was the best rum of the three.

I then pointed out that Rum number 3 (which was in fact the OLDEST RUM) was the Rum no 1 with sugar added, and that they had perceived the added sweetness as extra aging and smoothness.

These rums with high levels of sugar added to them are what I call "Dessert Rums" but they still and will always have a place on our bars, restaurant and spirit cabinet because consumers will buy rums (& other spirits) according to how they taste and not how they are made. But WE must educate them, when feasible, that part of the taste that they are appreciating is the added sugar, wine, vermouth, spice, etc.

What was really interesting about my exercise with the 50 tasters was the ones that preferred the dryer rum also liked whisky. While the “sweeter loving” rum drinkers like cognac.

That last dig on cognac drinkers? It's because cognac also has a dirty secret: much cognac has sugar added to it too.
January 8, 2014
How Much Sugar is Added to your Rum?

It's a funny thing about rum: It all is distilled from a fermented sugar cane derivative (fresh cane juice, molasses, or something in between), but sugar doesn't pass through the distillation process, so some producers add sugar back into the distilled rum to sweeten it up.

Recently on Facebook, people have posted lists of sugar levels in commercial brands of rum. One reportedly comes from the Finnish government and another from the Swedish government. I won't post them directly here but the lists are here on RefinedVices.com.

You should really take a look. They show commercial brands of rums with anything from 0 grams/liter of sugar added up to 46 grams per liter.

**Note – You should verify the content against the originals. The Swedish government's site is: https://www.systembolaget.se (thanks Magnus!) and the sugar content is listed for some individual products. I don't know about the other list so I can't verify its authenticity nor how current either of the lists/measurements are. Furthermore, I do not know if the rums we get in the US are the same as in other countries, even if the labels match. In other words, do not treat those lists as absolute truth.

But how much sugar is that really?

Allegedly, specific bottlings of rum by brands including Plantation, Bacardi, Zacapa, and Angostura contain between 17-22 grams of sugar per liter. This looks to be the average amount of sugar added by those brands that add sugar. Other brands are either much higher (40 g/l) or quite low (5-9 g/l).

So I wanted to know how much sugar is 20 grams and how sweet that makes a liter of liquid taste. So I measured it. My scale isn't the most accurate thing in the world, but here's how 20 grams came out:

Which comes out to a heaping half ounce, or probably a little under 3/4 ounces.

Heck, it's not uncommon for there to be that much sugar added to a single cocktail. And keep in mind that's the quantity for a full liter of rum, not 750 ml bottle.

I then added the sugar to 1 liter of water to see how sweet it was. In water, it was certainly noticeably sweet, but not soda-sweet.

For example, the driest soda I can think of is Q Tonic's grapefruit, orange, and lemon sodas. They have 13g sugar per 8 ounces, which by my calculation means 55 grams of sugar per liter; more than twice as much as is these rums.

I'm not saying that you want your rum as sweet as Coke, nor you necessarily want any sugar added to your rum at all. But for these rums having what sounds like a lot of sugar added to them, it's not really a ton.

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January 7, 2014
Buffalo Trace: A Second Visit to the Distillery

On my last visit to the Buffalo Trace distillery in Kentucky, I took a very cool tour of the property that you can read about at that link.

On a visit this past February as part of the Bourbon Classic event in Louisville, I had another tour that was completely different and I learned all new stuff. I never mind going to distilleries multiple times as there is always something new to pick up.

Below are just some miscellaneous facts I picked up, rather than the whole picture.

As it has been operating since 1787, Buffalo Trace is the oldest continually operating distillery in the US. They have 100 buildings on a property that stretches 130 acres, with 320,000 barrels aging on-site.

Buffalo Trace makes 17 bourbons at the distillery (plus a few other products), distilling five days a week. Despite this, they use just one strain of yeast for all their products.

In the fermentation process, 2/3 of the mash is 'sweet mash' that has just been fermented, while the remaining third is 'sour mash' that comes as the waste solids of the first distillation.

They use four water sources: spring water, reservoir water, river water, and municipal water. The first waters are filtered through sand and used in fermentation. The river water is also used in cooling after distillation (I'm guessing unfiltered). The municipal water is reverse-osmosis filtered to bring spirits down to bottle strength, as is the norm.

There's always more to learn on future visits…

December 24, 2013
How to Pack Liquor in your Luggage
I travel an awful lot and most of the time I'm bringing packing at least one bottle of liquor with me. (My record was 7 full bottles.) You can read about how much liquor you can pack in your luggage here, which differs per airline.

I've never had a bottle of wine or spirits break in my luggage, and I'll chalk that up partially to good luck and partially to good packing.

How to Pack Wine or Spirits Bottles in your Luggage

Mini-bottles go in your shoes. Most people probably don't carry as many mini-bottles and flask-sized samples as I do, but if that's the case there is all that space inside your shoes just waiting to be filled.

Wrap your bottles in a plastic bag. I usually travel with extra-large Ziplock bags – they don't take up any space in your luggage. Even if I forget, I always carry several plastic grocery bags that I use to hold my dirty clothes and I'll use one of those. Or finally if I don't have one handy (or my clothes are so incredibly stinky that I won't let them roll around in my suitcase), I'll use the hotel's garbage bag or laundry bag hanging in the closet.

There are two reasons to use a plastic bag and to wrap the bottle tight. Bottle breaks are the obvious one, but a more common problem is leaks. Bottles with corks and even screwcaps quite often leak a little bit or a lot- especially when they go into the low-pressure cargo hold in an airplane.

One friend who frequently transports open bottles recommends using plumber's tape on all the caps to seal them.
Pack Your Suitcase Mostly Full. I am a proud over-packer so my suitcase is nearly always full. Even if you're not, you don't want bottles rolling around, shifting, or banging into each other. Don't pack it burstingly full, of course, because you need room for the bottles.

Suitcase not full? Then fill the extra space with bubble wrap that you'll use around your bottles on the way home.

Pad the Suitcase. If your bottles are right up against the side of your suitcase, they're more likely to break when it gets tossed around by luggage handlers up against hard and soft surfaces.

My suitcase has space in the top flap for hanging shirts (a built-in suit bag) so that side has built-in coverage. On the bottom of my suitcase right in the middle I'll put any books or magazines I've picked up or finished on the trip, followed by a layer of something soft if I have it. If I have a ton of paper literature I put the rest of it in the outside flap of the suitcase – it not only forms more padding there, but if my luggage is overweight I can throw out or carry-on those papers/books.

Wrap the bottles in pants or sweaters. I have always assumed that when bottles break in luggage it is at the neck, but a survey of my other booze-hauling friends suggests that it's usually the sides that break instead. Regardless, wrap your bottles in heavy material. I typically use jeans, start by wrapping one leg around the neck, then keep wrapping around the bottle. If I don't have any pants available I'll wrap the bottles in t-shirts instead. Or if I have plenty of clean stuff I'll do a t-shirt then a pair of jeans.
Put a barrier between bottles. You don't want them knocking into each other. Flip-flops are great if you have them since they're foam.

Pack around the sides. Fill in the rest of the space with your remaining items, making sure to put something at the top and bottom of the bottles. Most often I'll have my dirty clothes bag(s) on one side and shoes on the other. Then a lot of little stuff, toiletries, etc in all the corners.
Other considerations:

Room for More. When I'm not sure if I'll run out of space in my luggage for bottles I'll find at my destination, I put a zipper-closed canvas bag in my luggage. That way if I bring home a ton of booze, I can put the extra dirty clothes and toiletries into the zipper bag and check it on the way home.

Consider the weight. A full 750 ml bottle of liquor weighs a little under 3 pounds (1400 grams). The weight limit on most checked luggage is 50 pounds.

Duty-Free Liquor. If you plan on buying your booze in duty-free, you may have to pack it into your luggage anyway. For example if you're flying into the US and transferring planes, you'll have to check the duty-free items into your luggage at the transfer airport. That can be a real hassle if you don't plan for it.

I prefer to buy my liquor at a store while I'm traveling instead of duty free just for this reason, and more often that not the sale price at duty-free isn't that good anyway. That said, you can get some cool collectors bottles not available anywhere else in duty-free.

So the best thing to do if you plan to shop duty-free and know you'll have to repack it is to pack your luggage as above with a big hole in the middle where you'll put your bottles. Fill that hole with bubble wrap and bags so they're easy to access when you have to repack your suitcase on the floor of the airport.

Bottle Transport Bags and Tools

Some commercial products are meant to take care of the padding and bagging part of this. Most have bubble wrap interior, though some have absorbent material like diaper material. Then most have an outer bag that seals so that even if the bottle leaks or breaks it will all be captured inside. One friend said he used a boating dry bag.

I have not tried the below brands/products, but a few brands available are:
If this post was useful, you might also want to read:
- Airline Drink Menus
- Airline Liquor Packing Regulations
December 20, 2013
SF Bar Write-Ups: Mikkeller Bar, Brass Tacks, The Cavalier
For the website WorldsBestBars.com I write up new (good) bars opening in San Francisco. For November I covered:
- The Cavalier, a fancy hotel bar/restaurant downtown
- Brass Tacks, the Hayes Valley bar in the former Marlena's
- Mikkeller Bar, a downtown beer bar where the staff are actually nice
Check out the write-ups here.

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December 19, 2013
Syrups are the New Bitters on Details.com

Have you looked through your December magazines yet? In just about every one that I get (and I get a lot of them), there is a recommendation for a specialty cocktail syrup of one flavor or another as a suggestion for gifting.

By the time I noticed this, I'd already written my latest story for Details.com, which we ended up calling Syrups are the New Bitters. It's not to say that you no longer need bitters now that there are more syrups on the market, but rather where once there was a lack of variety of bitters on the market and bartenders turned into entrepreneurs to develop their own brands, now syrups are at that same place.

I mentioned many brands specializing in syrups dedicated to particular cocktails, seasonal syrups, and a whole section on tonic syrups.

Check it out on Details.com.

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December 16, 2013