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Wild Turkey Distillery Visit

This spring I visited eight American whiskey distilleries, including Wild Turkey.

The Wild Turkey brand has been around a while, but the current distillery is just three years old, having moved across the street from the old one. It's clean, modern, and spacious.

Wild Turkey uses all non-GMO grains in their bourbon and rye, but they don't tell us their specific mashbill. Despite having several products (Russell's Reserve, Rare Breed, etc.) there is just one mashbill for their bourbon, and another one for their ryes.

They ferment the grains for three days before distillation.

The bourbon is distilled up to 115 proof in the 48-foot tall column still, and then up to 125 proof in the doubler, which acts like a pot still.

In column distillation, there are actually heads and tails, but they only appear when you first turn on the still (heads) and when you turn it off (tails). However, you can just add these back into the column when you start it up again, so there really is no middle cut from the column still.

The rickhouses for Wild Turkey are 7 storeys tall, and they have a total inventory of about 480,000 barrels. The barrels have a #4 char.

Wild Turkey was recently purchased by Campari. Previously it was owned by Pernod-Ricard, and in the deal of the sale Pernod-Ricard still gets to buy 90% of their used barrels for the next 10 years. I'm guessing all those barrels go to Jameson.

They have just released Wild Turkey 81 Rye. It is 81 proof. They have a 101 proof rye, but it was sold out already for the year back in April.

Visiting Wild Turkey

Free tours are available, and visitors do get tasting samples. Visit WildTukey.com for more information.

June 22, 2012
Jack Daniel’s Distillery Visit

This spring I toured eight American whisky distilleries, including Jack Daniel's.

As you'd expect, Jack Daniel's is a huge operation with a very slick tour. You start with a video at the visitors' center, then take a shuttle up to the top of the hill. There, they burn sugar maple wood into charcoal for the Lincoln County Process, in which newly-distilled spirit is filtered through charcaol before barrel aging. They weren't burning wood on the day I visited, so no bonfire for me.

Then we visited the cave spring where they get the water to ferment the grains before distilling, and then into Jack's old office. We saw the safe that killed Jack Daniel – he kicked it out of frustration one day and the injury caught gangrene and it eventually killed him.

The mashbill for Jack Daniel's is 80% corn, 8% rye, and 12% malted barley. The corn is #1 yellow corn. They say with a higher corn amount, you need a higher malted barley amount to help ferment it. They have 56 fermentation vats on-site that hold 40,000 gallons apiece. Fermentation lasts for 6 days – quite a long time. It reaches 11-12 percent alcohol after fermentation.

There are four distillation columns, all made of copper, and needing to be replaced every 9 or 10 years. (The whisky is only distilled in one of them, not all four. They just have four because they make so much whiskey.) Unlike most bourbon, there is no second distillation in a "thumper" or "doubler." They distill the whisky up to 140 proof (160 is the legal limit).

Then the whiskey goes through the Lincoln County Process. There are 72 vats, each filled with a ten foot layer of sugar maple charcoal. The whiskey is sprayed on the top of the vats and it slowly drips down through the charcoal, taking about 4-6 days to get all the way through. The charcoal in each vat is replaced every 4-5 months.

This is in contrast to George Dickel, the other major Tennessee whiskey, where they fill the vats up with charcoal and spirit, let it sit a week, and then drain the whole thing.

They say the charcoal filtering removes 80 percent of hte oils and impurities from the distillate. Gentleman Jack is filtered through charcoal a second time at bottling, through a thinner layer of charcoal.

The whiskey is aged in their 81 warehouses spread throughout the region. Barrels are "quarter-sawn American oak" with a #4 char. It takes one 60 year-old tree to make one barrel. On the plus side, there is extra wood left over from the tree for other things, and many barrels are reused after aging American whiskey to age other spirits for more than 60 years apiece.

The barrels are first toasted and then charred at their own cooperage, the Brown-Forman Cooperage.

Last year they sold 10.23 million cases of Jack.

Master Distiller Jeff Arnett describes the taste of Jack as "Sweet and oakey," as opposed to the "bold and spicy" of other American whiskies. We tasted Jack before it goes through the Lincoln County Process – it was noticeably oilier and grainier than it is afterward. Arnett says that the Lincoln County Process "removes the bitterness associated with the grain bill."

The Jack Daniel's Single Barrel bottlings always come from the top (hottest, most wood-influenced) floors of the rickhouse, while the Green Label comes from the ground floor.

Visiting Jack Daniel's

Contrary to popular belief, there are some tours where you're allowed to taste whiskey at Jack Daniel's. Those cost $10.

Though they don't really sell whiskey at the gift shop, they do sell "commemorative bottles" full of whiskey.

Visitor information is on the website here.

June 15, 2012
Distillery Visit: George Dickel

This spring I visited the George Dickel distillery, located in Cascade Hollow, Tennessee.

Dickel and Jack Daniel's are the two defining Tennessee whiskies: both employ the "Lincoln County Process" of running the new spirit through 10+ feet of charcoal before it is aged. Contrary to popular belief, this is not a requirement of Tennessee whisky, as Tennessee whisky is not its own category by US law. By putting "Tennessee" on the label it must be made in Tennessee, but beyond that Dickel and Daniel's meet all the requirements for bourbon.

In 1870, George Dickel founded the distillery, originally called Cascade Whisky, and it was renamed by his wife after Dickel died. Prohibition came early to Tennessee, so in 1911 the distillery moved to Kentucky, then closed during national Prohibition. Twenty years after Prohibition the distillery was rebuilt about half a mile from its original location.

The mashbill for Dickel bourbon is 84% corn, 8% rye, and 8% malted barley. All bourbon uses a majority of corn, malted barley to aid in fermentation, and a minority of either wheat or rye. At Dickel it is a pretty high percentage of corn for a sweeter tasting whiskey.

Most of the corn used for George Dickel is local, and the rye and barley comes from North Dakota. They distill here four days each week currently, so they have the capacity to make a lot more bourbon than they currently do.

The grains, which are cooked to make them easier to ferment, ferment with yeast for three or four days before they are distilled. The still is 42 inches in diameter and is three storeys tall. In a column still, the fermented mash (the grain solids and the liquids, unlike in scotch whisky where only the liquids are distilled) goes in near the top of the column. During distillation the alcohol comes out the top of the still and everything else goes out the bottom.

Most bourbons (but not Jack Daniel's) undergo a second distillation in either a "thumper" or "doubler." This second distillation acts like a pot still, so they say. Doublers are more common, and used here at George Dickel.

Originally Dickel distilled whiskey in the winter as they said it tasted best then. To mock that, the newly-distilled whisky is chilled to 40 degrees Fahrenheit before it is added to vats of sugar maple charcoal for the Lincoln County Process.

While at Jack Daniel's the whiskey is continuously dripped through a huge vat of charcoal and collected at the bottom, at Dickel the chilled distillate fills up the tank with the charcoal and sits together for about a week before it is drained. They have to refill the charcoal in each vat every 12-18 months.

The first distillation reaches 115 proof. The second distillation brings it up to 135 proof (160 is the legal limit). Though they can put whiskey in the barrel at up to 125 proof, at Dickel they store it at 115. The whiskey is aged in new American oak barrels with a char #4 on the staves and char #2 on the barrel heads.

As is common in American whiskey, the barrel warehouses (rickhouses) are not located right at the distillery, but are scattered about the hilltops nearby. This way they can take advantage of the cooling winds that blow through. Dickel has about 150,000 barrels of whiskey aging today.

Dickels rickhouses are all one storey structures. (Four Roses also uses one storey rickhouses but six storeys is the norm.) With one storey warehouses, there is less temperature differential between barrels aging at the top of the warehouse (those will be the hottest and get the most wood influence the fastest) and the bottom of the warehouse (where whiskey ages relatively slowly).

The angel's share, the amount of alcohol that evaporates from the barrels during storage, is 5 percent the first year and 3 percent each year after.

After aging, the whiskey is run though a paper filter to remove any charcoal bits before bottling.

Visiting George Dickel

Last year 17,000 visitors came through the distillery. The tour is free, but unfortunately there is no whiskey tasting as part of it. Visitors can buy bottles but can't drink them on site. For more information, visit Dickel.com.

June 8, 2012
Summer Whisky Cocktails in Whisky Advocate Magazine
Holy Smokes! They put my story on Summer Whisky Cocktails on the cover of Whisky Advocate Magazine!

Inside it's 7 pages of deliciousness, with recipes brought to you by:
- Alan Akwai
- Brendan Dorr
- Jon Santer
- David Delaney, Jr.
- Larry Rice
- Sam Ross
- Kevin Diedrich
- Kevin Kelpe
- Mike Ryan
There are swizzles and punches and highballs and bucks and smoky drinks! Run screaming to your local newsstand and pick up the Summer 2012 issue of Whisky Advocate today!
June 6, 2012
When Pot Distilled Whiskey Is Not Pot Still Whiskey

What is pot still whiskey?

The obvious answer is "whiskey that's made in a pot still," but apparently that's not true if you're in Ireland.

I was on a trip recently with whiskey writer/expert/class clown/author Dominic Roskrow and was showing off my sexy Irish whiskey distillery diagram, when he called me out on it. He said that the Cooley distillery makes no pot still whiskey.

"But they have pot stills in which they make whiskey, so obviously they make pot still whiskey," I said. It went back and forth for a few days, but the argument comes down to this:

In Ireland, "pure pot still" whiskey has long meant whiskey distilled from a combination of malted and unmalted barley. Thus "pot still Irish whiskey" doesn't tell us the type of still used to make it; it tells us the barley blend used. They claim if you distill another type of whiskey in a pot still (such as all-malted barley) in Ireland it is not pot still Irish whiskey.

That's like a basketball player arguing that an soccer ball is not a ball because it's not a basketball.

But apparently there is no use arguing logic in Ireland… so let's look at the law.

In his efforts to prove me wrong, Roskrow turned to someone with even more expertise in Irish whiskey, Peter Mulryan. Mulryan filled us in on how they've changed the legal definition to fit their local definition of pot still Irish whiskey. Mulryan wrote in an email:

Until very recently there was no legal definition of what constituted a Pot Still Irish whiskey, this allowed John Teeling [of Cooley distillery] to say that his single malt was a pot still whiskey, as it was distilled in a pot still. This was of course nonsense, as the traditional industry definition of a pot still whiskey has nothing to do with the distillation process itself; it was and is, all about the mash. A pot still whiskey is made from a COMBINATION of both malted and unmalted barley. Simple.

The industry and the Irish Government have recently clarified this new definition and it is now certified by the EU, John Teeling has backed down and he too now endorses this new legal status. At the same time the word 'Pure' was dropped from packaging, as the word had no standing in law, it was replaced by the word 'Single', this now appears on all Irish Distillers bottlings and literature.

So from the start of 2012 a single pot still Irish whiskey is one made on the island of Ireland, from a mash of malted and unmalted barely, which has been matured for at least three years in oak. However that was always accepted as the norm, the law simply enforces best practice.

But here's the thing: in order to conform to international standards, they had to drop the word "pure" from "pure pot still Irish whiskey." So apparently you can't just completely make things up in Ireland after all!

It's just too bad their also-historically-accurate-but-logically-nonsensical definition of "pot still" made it through legislation.

May 29, 2012
A Few Thousand Words on the Aviation, In German

In the current issue of Mixology Magazine, the premier German-language bartending magazine, I have a big story about the Aviation cocktail.

It covers a bunch of the history of the cocktail – how it originally had creme de violette and then the recipe was probably copied incorrectly and it was not made the right way again for decades. (I wrote a brief blog entry about that here.)

Then it delves into bartenders' preferred types of gins, maraschino liqueurs, and creme de violette, plus a whole bunch of variations on the cocktail. It includes recipes from Sierra Zimei, Humberto Marques, Brendan Dorr, Jacob Grier, and Olivier Jacobs.

It doesn't appear to be online yet, so I hope you German-reading print subscribers will enjoy it.

May 28, 2012
Another Commercial Clear Ice Cube Tray

As you may recall, through much experimentation I figured out a way to make clear ice at home.

I later found an ice cube tray that uses the same principle (controlling direction of freezing) to make clear ice.

And now someone just pointed me to another ice cube tray that also uses the same principle (and has the same name as the last one). The Polar Ice Crystal Clear Ice Cube Tray is more compact than the other model, but it makes just one big cube at a time.

Like the other model, this is an insulated container with a tray inside. The interior tray is perforated, so all the cloudy parts of the ice are frozen beneath the perforation and you chop it off after it's frozen.

This one costs $18.99. More info is here.

An index of all of the ice experiments on Alcademics can be found here.

May 28, 2012
The Sangria Spectrum in Fine Cooking Magazine

In the June/July issue of Fine Cooking magazine I have a story about sangria.

We kind of rewrote it a bunch of times and now it's mostly a list of tips on how to make a good sangria, but here is the intro.

Traditional sangria is delicious, but it can also be a bit predictable: a pitcher of red wine with orange liqueur or brandy, slices of citrus, and sometimes a splash of soda for fizz. Recently, though, sangria has been showing up to the party dressed in new shades—pink, white, and even yellow—thanks to a base of rosé, white, or sparkling wine. The fruit accessories have diversified, too. Some recipes call for vibrant peaches or pastel pears, and others boast a rainbow of kiwi, pineapple, strawberries, and blueberries. With so many options, today’s sangria is practically a year-round drink, changing to suit the season and the occasion.

There are also two sangria recipes. The first is from Kathy Casey, a strawberry-melon sangria in a deep red color.

The second is by Kim Haasarud, author of 101 Sangrias. It is a yellowish pineapple-orange sangria with peach vodka and Riesling.

The pictures are better in the print magazine, I promise.

May 9, 2012
Extreme Aperol and the No Baloney Negroni

As ongoing part of the Solid Liquids Project, I decided to make high-proof Aperol.

I haven't talked about this use of dehydrated liqueurs yet, which is making high-proof spirits with them. Simply add neutral grain spirits plus dehydrated liqueur, plus some of the original liqueur to keep taste consistency.

First I dehydrated some Aperol (I can't remember if I used the stovetop method or the oven method– they produce the same thing).

Then I made Extreme Aperol.

Extreme Aperol

2 ounces Aperol
2 ounces Everclear Grain Alcohol
1 ounce (by volume) Dehydrated Aperol

Combine ingredients and shake container until dehydrated Aperol is dissolved. (I had to break out the muddler as I had some big chunks.)

Extreme Aperol, Looking Sexy

Everclear is 75.5 percent alcohol and Aperol is 11 percent alcohol, so by my rough calculations ((.4 x 75) + (.4 x 11)) this comes out to 34.4 percent alcohol.

And the stuff is flipping delicious, like Aperol on steroids.

Then I decided to make a Negroni with it. Many people new to Campari (a Negroni is equal parts Campari, gin, and sweet vermouth) find it too bitter and weird for their taste, so bartenders sometimes substitute the more orangey and less bitter Aperol.

The problem is that Campari is 24 percent alcohol, while Aperol is only 11 percent. I don't think Aperol holds up well in the Negroni. Thus, using Extreme Aperol should keep the same flavor of Aperol but have a higher proof.

To make Extreme Aperol the alcoholic strength as regular Campari I'd need to water it down to 70% Extreme Aperol to 30% water, so in this recipe I just used .75 ounces Aperol instead of the usual ounce.

No Baloney Negroni

.75 ounces Extreme Aperol
1 ounce Gin
1 ounce Sweet Vermouth

Stir all ingredients over ice and strain over new ice or serve up if you prefer. Consider garnishing with an orange peel.

The No Baloney Negroni.

This drink has the same syrupy texture as a Negroni, but the orange is more present than in the standard recipe. Awesome!

The No Baloney Negroni, Served Up

This post is part of the ongoing Solid Liquids Project. If you liked it, you may want to read Campari Fruit Roll-Ups, the non-alcoholic Campari & Soda, or the Missing Link Aviation.

April 23, 2012
Dehydrated Liqueur Flavor Pills and Champagne Cocktails

As an ongoing part of my Solid Liquids Project, I have dehydrated various liqueurs into flavored powders and am now experimenting with new ways to use them.

In yesterday's post I described how I bought a pill press to make tablets out of the liqueurs.

I started with Angostura bitters, but then made additional "flavor pills" out of Campari, Midori, and Aperol.

I was thinking that these would be fun flavor enhancers for drinks, especially champagne drinks.

A cool presentation might be to give a guest a glass of champagne and a variety of flavor enhancers from which to choose. To make it extra fun, I put some in a pill box.

Then you pick your pill and add it to the sparkling wine. It fizzes up nicely.

And eventually it breaks down and colors and flavors the drink.

It does take several minutes for the flavor to become noticeable in the champagne. I tried to speed up the process by experimenting with adding baking powder to the mix, but this affected the flavor of the drink.

Thus this works best with the most strongly flavored liqueurs, and using rather large sized flavor pill tablets. It could also be a fun addition to hot tea.

Sometime soon I'll do some experimenting (I've run out of sparkling wine for now) to see which flavors work best in this format.

I hope this inspires some fun experimenting!

April 18, 2012