Category: vodka

Distilling Honey Into Vodka: An Interview with Caledonia Spirits Owner/Distiller Ryan Christiansen

Years ago when I first heard of – and tried- Barr Hill Gin, it was a revelation. The gin is neutral spirits with added juniper and honey- that's it. The honey brings with it other aromatics from the flora the bees feed on.

The gin is made by Caledonia Spirits in Vermont. A recent press release stated:

Caledonia Spirits is known best for its flagship gins, but the distillery's Barr Hill Vodka is a truly unique offering within the vodka category. Made entirely from raw northern honey and nothing else (~3000 lbs per batch), it’s distilled only twice – a stark contrast from many of the popular vodkas that get distilled 3-5 (or more) times and filtered to oblivion. Vodka was traditionally thought of as a spirit that became better the more times it was filtered, but doing so leaves a spirit that is completely odorless and tasteless.

Knowing just how beautiful of an ingredient the raw northern honey is, Caledonia Spirits wanted to flip tradition on its head and create a vodka that retains some of the flavor and aroma from its sugar source. Distilling and filtering it too many times would totally lose the honey flavor, but thanks to Caledonia Spirits’ unique process, the resulting vodka is fragrant and flavorful…yet not sweet at all. The honey tasting notes are very subtle, but they’re present enough to tell you that you’re not having the same neutral-tasting vodka that is so often served. Every year, Caledonia Spirits purchases 60,000-80,000 pounds of raw honey from beekeepers within a 250-mile radius of the distillery.

Sine then, the brand has released a vodka and a barrel-aged gin. I hadn't tried the vodka before. It is absolutely waxy almost to the point of greasy, with notes of Honey Nuts Cheerios, and I think I love it.

I was given the opportunity to interview Caledonia Spirits Owner/Distiller Ryan Christiansen, so that's just what I did!

Is the base of Barr Hill Gin purchased grain neutral spirits (plus honey and juniper)? Or is there distilled honey spirit in it also?

The base of Barr Hill Gin is grain neutral. It is then distilled in one of our two custom-built botanical extraction stills with Juniper. The spirit is proofed down with raw honey and our water.

Is Barr Hill Vodka 100% distilled from honey or is it a blend of GNS and distilled honey? If a blend can you give an approximate ratio?

Barr Hill Vodka is distilled entirely from raw northern honey.

I see several stills in the image on the website – the big pot and a small and tall finishing column. Which set-up do you use to make the gin vs the vodka?

Our gin is distilled in Irene and Ramona, two custom-built botanical extraction stills. Our vodka is distilled twice, once through a pot stripping run, then through the column still to 190 proof.

Images stolen from Barr Hill.

Is the honey sold by the pound? Is there a standard conversion for pounds of honey to liquid volume? Do you know the liquid volume of honey for the "60,000-80,000 pounds" you buy annually?

We purchase our honey by the 55 gallon drum, which holds about 650lbs of honey. In the last year we’ve used over 67,000 lbs to make our spirits. Each bottle of vodka requires 3-4 pounds of raw honey to make. Where we fall in that range from 3-4 depends on the batch size.

We do also sell our honey by the pound for use by bartenders and chefs.

For fermenting/distilling honey, do you dilute to a certain standardized sugar level (and do you measure this in BRIX) before fermentation? Can you say what that level is?

We pitch yeast at 24 brix, and ferment to dry.

How long does fermentation take? I imagine it's super fast.

Honey fermentations are much slower than grain fermentations, usually about 2-3 weeks to dry.

Do you temperature control the fermentation? Do you let it go longer into a malolactic fermentation? If not, is there a reason, such as it becomes disgusting?

We control fermentation temperatures with a water jacket on the fermenter. Honey fermentations don’t need much cooling. Our grain fermentations for whiskey production require much more heat extraction. We do not let our fermentations go to malolactic.

What's the ABV you get after fermentation?

Approx 12%.

You say you never heat the honey prior to fermentation, would heating it make it lose flavor/blow off volatile aromatics? (If I'm making a honey simple syrup should I not heat the water?)

This is a hard question to answer without a deep conversation. In short, it really depends on the honey. The botanical influence of the bees foraging varies significantly between honeys. As a general rule, keep the honey raw (below 110 degrees) when possible.

Obviously, our distillation process cooks our honey, but that occurs after fermentation. We’ve found it crucial to keep the honey raw during fermentation to develop and accentuate flavors that will stay intact through distillation.

And if you don't heat it and you do add water, is it very hard to mix? What do you use to mix it? Do you need specialized equipment for handling honey? It all seems incredibly sticky.

In our early days, it was a food grade shovel, bucket, electric drill, and a paint paddle with many trips up the ladder to the top of the fermenter. It was sticky and backbreaking, but it worked. We’ve added some fancy honey pumps and circulation lines in our fermenters that have made our lives a little easier. The honey is a sugar so with enough movement, it’ll dissolve. Keeping it raw certainly adds some challenges, but it’s essential for the finished spirit.

When purchasing huge volumes of honey as you do, how does that honey come? In what sort of container?

Beautiful reused and dented metal drums. Beekeepers never throw them away, they just keep traveling around the world. Even local honey is often delivered with old stickers and labels from all over the world.

Clearly as a vodka, you distill the fermented honey up to 95% to be a member of the category. I remember researching a while back to find that there wasn't a standardized terminology for what you'd call a lower-ABV honey distillate (other than "honey spirit") – some brands were calling their products "honey rum" for example. I'm wondering if you've heard any sort of consensus on this or your opinion on what to call honey spirit that isn't distilled to the vodka ABV?

I’ve heard a handful of terms. My favorite is Somel. This is an initiative led by a handful of distillers working with honey. https://somel.org/

Thanks to Caledonia Spirits for answering my questions!

August 4, 2020
A Visit to MGP’s Lawrenceburg Distillery
As most of you nerds already know, most of the rye whiskey produced in the US is made at MGP Ingredients, aka Midwest Grain Products. They also make a ton of bourbon and neutral spirit used for vodka and gin. These products are fermented and distilled on site, aged on site or elsewhere, and bottled up as a zillion different brands on the marketplace.

Now in the past few years, MGP has begun to release a range of their own products. Interestingly they're not all under MGP as a brand name but under various names including George Remus bourbon, Till vodka, and Rossville Union rye whiskey. The press trip I took to the distillery was more about introducing these products to the world than the various client brands made here, but naturally that was of interest too.

History and Products

The distillery was officially founded in 1847 by George Ross as Rossville Distillery, though they've found evidence that there has been distilling on the site going back to at least 1808. In 1933 at the end of Prohibition, the distillery was purchased by Seagram and run by the company until 2001. The company was sold to Pernod-Ricard and owned by them until 2007, when it was purchased by MGP.

MGP itself is a company founded in 1941 to make high-test alcohol for torpedos to support the war effort. They actually own two distilleries though we only hear about this one.

At the Lawrenceburg distillery (outside Cincinnati but on the border of Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana) they mostly produce the aged products – whiskies- though they also do some gin and neutral spirits. The other distillery, located in Atchison, Kansas (the site of the company headquarters where it was founded) distills neutral spirits and makes gin.

(The Lawrenceburg distillery, pics from MGP)

(The Atchison distillery that I did not visit. Pic from MGP.)

Of all the products (listed here), the most well-known and popular that they sell to various brands are the:
- 95% rye whiskey (a mashbill of 95% rye, 5% malted barley)
- 51% rye whiskey (51% rye, 45% corn, 4% malted barley)
- bourbon 36% rye (60% corn, 36% rye, 4% malted barley)
- bourbon 21% rye (75% corn, 21% rye, 4% malted barley)
So when you see those mashbills listed on products with various names (particular the 95% rye), there is a super good chance they were distilled at MGP.

Since they're dealing with lots and lots of grain, they also make grain products (list here), including raw ingredients for everything from pastries to pizza crust to imitation cheese.

I asked them how many mashbills they make in total. "We make a lot," came the definitive reply.

MGP Spirits

I was a bit worried that the MGP brands were just going to be the regular MGP products as all the various other brands with a different label and not have anything to say about them. Luckily there is a clear point of differentiation. When it comes to the vodka, theirs is made from wheat, when most of their clients' vodka is made from corn. But more importantly, the whiskies:

While nearly all their clients bottle whiskey that's of a single mashbill, MGP brand whiskies are all combinations of multiple mashbills. So George Remus Straight Bourbon Whiskey is a mix of the 21 and 36 percent high rye bourbons, and Rossville Union is a blend of the 95 and 51 percent rye mashbills.

This gives these products a point of differentiation from their many clients' products.

A Look Around the Distillery

The facility is a bunch of brick buildings located on one site, like a campus with no student lawns or a really big depressing orphanage. Different buildings house different parts of the operation – the grain store, fermentation room, distillery, grain dryer, barrel warehouses, etc.

The facility is not set up for tourists or photography, and basically we were able to see what we could see.

The water for the distillery comes from an aquifer, and it remains a constant 56 degrees Fahrenheit year-round. That's very convenient as in the hot summers the water is still cool to run through the condensers.

The fermentation room (there are 14, 27,000 gallon vats in this room; there is another room but I'm not sure if it's the same size). Fermentation takes about 3 days.

We were unable to take pictures in the distillery room, but as it passes through several floors of a building we could really only see one section of the column still and a part of the squareish gin stills anyway. In this facility there are three gin stills and two continuous column stills.

We visited one warehouse – there are seven on-site and I think 5 more elsewhere (though I'm not confident in those numbers).

This warehouse has six floors with six tiers per floor, with each floor separate from those above and below it acting as a "horizontal aging chamber." This is unlike the "vertical aging chamber" rickhouses in Kentucky where it's an open model (there's a frame on the outside but it acts as one big room) and the bottom level is cool while the top floor is super hot. The Kentucky rickhouses lose more water, as opposed to the humid ones here. They say that makes for a mellower whiskey.

Their standard barrel entry proof for whiskey is 120. We visited just the one warehouse that was racked. I inquired if their others might be palletized and the person I spoke to was evasive enough about answering that we can assume some are.

Product Specifics

So far, most of the line of MGP spirits is available in about 13 states. They're moving systematically rather than hitting the whole country at once.

Tanner's Creek whiskey, a blended bourbon, is only available in Indiana.

Eight & Sand blended whiskey is the newest product. It contains no GNS (grain neutral spirits), and no coloring. It's more than 51% bourbon bottled at 44% ABV. It's a blend of bourbon, rye, light whiskey, and corn whiskey.

"Eight and Sand" refers to a train going full-throttle (the eight) with added traction (sand on the tracks).

George Remus Bourbon is a blend of 21 and 36% rye bourbons, aged 5-6 years and bottled at 47%.

George Remus, the person, was a pharmacist turned attorney. He wrote prescriptions for medicinal whiskey during Prohibition and had his own brand of medicinal whiskey. Not only that, but he had his own medicinal whiskey trucks "hijacked" so that he could report the whiskey stolen and sell it illegally. He was known as "King of the Bootleggers" and may have been the inspiration for Jay Gatsby. He murdered his wife but was acquitted for 'temporary insanity.' More about his life here.

There is also a George Remus Reserve bottling and so far there have been two of these.

Rossville Union rye whiskey is a blend of their 51% and 95% rye whiskey mashbill whiskeys aged about 5-6 years. The standard bottling is 47% ABV.

They also sell a barrel-proof Rossville Union rye, and it's my favorite of their products. It's about the same age as their standard rye, but with a different ratio of rye mashbills. It has all that lovely pickle brine flavor but bottled at 56.3% ABV.
April 9, 2019
A Visit to the Bently Heritage Estate Distillery

America has been opening some truly impressive distilleries and distillery tasting rooms as of late, mostly in Louisville. Since the last time I visited only about four years ago, Michter's just opened a new distillery a week ago, Rabbit Hole distillery looks modern and impressive, and Angel's Envy, the Evan Williams Experience, whatever Bulleit is doing at Stitzel-Weller, Kentucky Peerless, and Old Forester have opened their visitors' centers.

But probably the most exciting new distillery in America to open just popped in Minden, Nevada. The area is a high desert environment, a plateau surrounded by mountains on all sides, about 45 minutes south of Reno.

The scale of Bently Heritage Estate Distillery, which opens to the public Saturday, February 9, 2019, is going to blow your mind. Keep reading.

This is a ranch and an estate distillery, so nearly everything in their bottles is grown on the property (minus botanicals for the gin… so far). That includes barley, oats, wheat, rye, and corn for their base spirits. They also raise cattle and have a butcher shop on the property, and grow other crops including hops and alfalfa.

But let's talk about the stills, because:

Yeah. So there are actually two separate distilleries on the property. This one that looks like the Holy Mother Church of the Order of Saint Juniper; and the other one with where you can sit on a couch and watch American single malt whiskey being made in traditional scotch whisky stills.

The cathedral-like space is a former creamery dating to 1906. From the outside, it doesn't look like much.

Inside, you enter facing this gargantuan pot still with two columns behind it. This is a discontinuous pot-column hybrid system that works together. In this still they make gin, vodka, and forthcoming liqueurs. The two columns are more like a single column cut in half – after the liquid moves through one still it's pumped to the top of the other one to continue its journey.

Behind this still is a stainless steel continuous column still. I believe they said that for anything that will go into the pot still they first strip the solids and give it a first distillation in the column.

The column still is narrow and has so many pipes and parts connecting to it that it's not really recognizable as a still. It's called a Headframe still. It has a capacity of 5000 gallons per day.

Behind the column still is a grain cooker. Grains are pumped in from the ceiling and cooked for 3-4 hours. In the case of their oat spirit that is the base of the vodka and gin, they use "a ton" of enzymes so that the oats don't gunk up the cooker.

Behind the cooker at the far end of the same cathedral room is their experimental still, which is the size of a standard start-up distillery still. It's a pot with rectifying column.

On the sides of the cathedral room are fermentation and storage vats and tanks to hold liquids in the various states of production.

Beyond this room the building continues into a barrel filling room and a bottling line.

Rickhouses

The rickhouses are a mile or so from the other site. We didn't get a chance to peek inside them (I think they are being developed for visitors as well so that certain groups can get barrel tasting experiences there in the future), but they have three separate temperature and humidity controlled areas (so they can imitate the weather changes of Kentucky and Scotland at the same time), plus an experimental climate control area that I assume is smaller.

About the only thing they don't have onsite is a cooperage.

The Feedmill, Scotch Stills, and Visitors' Center

The main visitor's center is the former feedmill with grain silos that date to 1906 as well. The room that makes up the main visitors center apparently held a huge vat of molasses which was used to enrich the grain to make feed. That's used as the design inspiration for the central three-story spiral staircase. There will be a retail shop on the ground floor, a bar on the second floor, and I believe the third floor will be used for special events like mixology lessons. (On my visit, Tony Abou-Ganim was there teaching the press how to make cocktails.)

All three floors of this building have a glass wall that looks into the adjacent concrete silos. The two buildings were joined and the interior of the silos were carved out to make a clover shape. [For an amazing example of this type of architecture, check out the mind-melting pictures of the Zeitz Museum in South Africa.]

Inside the former grain silos are two enormous Forsyth stills for making American single malt whisky. There is also a mash tun and fermentation vat in the room so that all the distillation production is self-contained – except for the malting, which we'll see in a second.

The lyne arm of the still is at quite an angle so in single malt scotch they would tell us that this makes for a meaty, oily style of whisky. Here the distillers said they can make that style of make adjustments so that it comes out in a lighter style if they so wish it.

The Ranch and the Malt

Elsewhere on the ranch they raise cattle and have a retail butcher shop (they're getting into cheese soon as well). The ranch also has the largest compost facility in Nevada, which they use for their spent grains from distilling. This all gets composted and is used as fertilizer in the fields on site.

For spirit production, they're growing heirloom corn varieties, oats, rye, and barley. The distillers make request from the farm managers and they attempt to grow different grain varieties to try in their distillation experiments.

As the Bently Heritage ranch has been operational for about 4.5 years preparing for the distillery to officially open, they have a lot of grains stored up for future spirits. (I think they said they were still distilling 2016 grains for their current products; they've got a lot of backlog.) They have 5 cultivars of barley and I think they've tried a lot of different types of corn.

They have 60,000 acres under cultivation. Even when no grains are currently growing, there's some stuff to look at.

With the scale of this production, it may not surprise you to find that they also malt their own grains. The malt house main room is full of grain storage and big tanks, which are self-contained "auto-malter" makers. Inside, the grains are soaked, dried (kilned), and come out as malted barley.

They also have a separate floor malting room, where wet grains are spread over a concrete floor, turned by hand for a few days, and then dried. (They'll be able to smoke the floor malted barley in the future, as is done in Islay scotch.) They'll be able to process 10 tons of malt per week (!!) here. They'll not use it all for themselves, but will sell some to beer producers.

They build a greenhouse that hasn't been planted yet (expect citrus trees and other botanicals probably to be used in future gin) and have a hop growing area next to it.

Beyond all this, they have a seed bank – apparently some of their heirloom varietals of grains can be hard to source from one year to the next so they propagate and store seeds.

The farm is all-natural and no-GMO, but is not certified organic (and I don't think they plan to be).

The Current Products

Obviously Bently Estate plans to make whiskey, and lots of it. But for now, the distillery is opening with three products: A vodka, a flavored vodka, and a gin.

Source One Vodka is distilled from estate grown oats, and it has a nice soft texture. They also produce a vodka rested in small oloroso sherry barrels.

Juniper Grove Gin is their London dry-style gin that's juniper forward with traditional gin botanicals except for the use of lime rather than other citrus.

Two more gins are forthcoming: Atrium, which will be closer to a New Western style of gin; and Alpine, which includes pinecones and will reflect the botanicals of the region.

What the Hell is Happening Here?

I'm glad you asked. I don't know.

Obviously this is an operation on a scale that is just not seen. Distilleries typically start small and/or focus on one spirit product. This one is starting huge and will be making tons of different spirits – anything that can be grown on the estate. (Which means no rum and maybe no vermouth.) So this one company will have in a few short years an entire portfolio of products, all self-grown and self-made in one location.

I'm very impressed and will continue to watch.

February 7, 2019
A Belvedere Distillery Visit and Vodka Terroir in the Single Estate Series
In the summer of 2017 I visited Poland with Belvedere Vodka to see how the vodka is made and to learn about the then-forthcoming Single Estate Rye series of vodkas, in which the same rye was grown in two different parts of Poland and separate, unfiltered vodkas were made from each. We got super deep into the science of terroir.

Belvedere is made from rye, which is first distilled at one of seven regional farm distilleries, and then redistilled and bottled at a distillery named Polmos Zyrardow. ("polmos" = "distillery") From other trips to Poland I've learned regional distilling followed by central distilling is quite common- why truck all that grain around when you can condense it into high-proof spirit and just transport the liquid?

The Polmos Zyrardow distillery dates back to 1910, and they've been making Belvedere exclusively at the facility since 1993.

Polish Vodka
- If the bottle says it's Polish vodka, it can't have additives like sugar/glycerin etc.
- It must also be made from a grain (rye, wheat, triticale, oats or barley) or from potatoes, rather than other fermentable material like molasses.
- Though it must be additive-free (this is exclusive of flavored vodka of course), it can be aged.
- The first reference to vodka is from Poland in 1405.
- Here's a more official page of Polish vodka production rules and processes.
Belvedere is made from rye, which has been grown in Poland for over 1000 years. Rye can thrive in harsh conditions; both hot and cold. Belvedere Pure (the flagship original) is distilled from golden rye, a high starch strain good for making alcohol that dates to the 1800s. The Single Estate series is made from another variety called diamond rye.

On site at Polmos Zyrardow is a water treatment plant that processes water from their well water source a 3km from the distillery. Water is purified in four stages: oxidation to break down chemical compounds into smaller parts; mineral filtration to remove iron and manganese; a soft filter to remove calcium and magnesium, and a carbon filter to remove all taste and odor. For water that is used to dilute Belvedere to its final proof, this water is then further filtered with reverse osmosis.

High-proof spirit comes in from the 7 farm distilleries and is redistilled at Polmos Zyrardow. It comes in at around 90-92% ABV, then it is watered down to 44-45% ABV before going into the stills. There are three columns in this distillery:
- The first column is the purification column, which removed impurities at the lower boiling temperatures than alcohol.
- The second column is the main rectification column, which removes impurities at a higher boiling point than alcohol, and brings the spirit back up to 96.5-96.6% ABV.
- The third column is the methanol column, which removes methanol created during fermentation.
The distillery runs for two seasons per year (corresponding to rye harvests I imagine), 24 hours/day (because it's harder to start and stop column stills) for a total of 167 days per year.

All the flavored varieties of Belvedere are made in house in the "alembic area." There they have cognac stills. The various ingredients are macerated in vodka of different strengths, and left to sit from anywhere from 2 days to 2 weeks. The fleshy fruits might go into higher alcohol spirit and stay for longer than things like tea. They're then redistilled to make the concentrated flavors. They make each flavor separately, then blend them together for their combination products.

Belvedere Pure is charcoal filtered. (The single estate range is not.)

Finally the vodka is diluted and bottled at the distillery.

The Single Estate Rye Series, and the Science of Terroir

Our group then flew to the Lake District of Poland, to the Bartezek estate, where the rye for one of the two Single Estate Series vodkas is grown and first distilled. The flight passed over lots of green farmland, forests, and small farms before getting to the Lake District- from our flight path it looked like a series of lakes and streams between them.

The Lake District is made up of about 2000 lakes, and it's located far from industry and sources of pollution. The climate is of long snowy harsh winters and short summers.

We didn't visit the Smogory Forest estate, but the climate there is "the mildest in Poland." Belvedere Unfiltered vodka was the same product as the Smogory Forest single estate vodka is now- they changed the name to accent the difference between it and the other estate. This region has a longer growing season. It's not much of a farm region but a forestry one – half the land is forest.

The rye used for the Single Estate Series is a baker's rye called Dankowskie Diamond Rye- both farm distilleries grow the same rye. Typically bakers and distillers want different things from their grains: distillers want grains with high starch and low proteins (as I learned in Sweden), as they want to convert all those carbs to alcohol.

In fact, the golden rye used in Belvedere pure takes 1 square meter of rye to make 1 bottle of vodka. For this less efficient bread-making rye for the Single Estate series, it take 1.4 square meter's worth of rye.

Each of the Single Estate vodkas use the same yeast, though this yeast is different from that used to ferment Belvedere Pure.

We visited the local farm distillery where the Lake Bartezek-grown rye is first distilled. The grains have enzymes and water added to break it down into fermentable sugars, then it is fermented for 72 hours at 35C. After fermentation, the rye beer is from 7-11% ABV. After distillation in the single, 60-plate column, the spirit ranges from 88-93% ABV.

These two vodkas in the Single Estate series were sent out to laboratories for analysis: not just the final vodkas, but also the rye beer (the wort) from each. They were sent to analytic labs as well as reviewed by tasting panels. The results were that the differences between the two were much more pronounced before distillation, but chemical differences were found between them as well as tasting differences – so if you taste the vodkas differently, it's not just all in your head.

We went through the scientific and tasting panel analysis reports rather quickly, so hopefully the below doesn't have errors, but here were some results:
- The main flavor differences between the two single estate vodkas were due to Maillard reaction congeners (that produce toasty sweet notes) and lipid congeners (that produce fatty, waxy aroma compounds).
- The Lake Bartezek vodka had more impact by Maillard reaction congeners, with less lipid congener notes, and a higher amount of esters in raw spirit.
- The Smogory Forest vodka had more nitrogen containing hectacycles such as pyrazines (toast nutty, peanut, coffee, cooked notes), furfural (caramelized notes), 2-acetylfuran (almond honey sweet bready woody notes), and methyl 2-methyl 3-something notes (umami character).
The brand describes the tasting differences between the two vodkas as:
- Smogory Forest: "a bold and savory vodka with notes of salted caramel, white pepper and honey-kissed hints. It brings out the richer flavors of rye."
- Lake Bartezek: "a fresh and delicate vodka with hints of spearmint, toasted nuts and black pepper. It brings out the more nuanced characteristics of rye."
The production of the two vodkas wasn't 100% exactly the same: The way to do that would be to grow the rye in different places and distill it in the same place. For the single estate series, each vodka was distilled where it was grown. So beyond the local soil/weather conditions where the rye was grown (terroir), there were some other factors that could have influenced the final vodka's flavor. These include:
- The length of time the rye grew in each location was different, but I'd say this is an aspect of terroir rather than an exception.
- The water used for fermentation at each site. Water isn't just water, but includes different quantities of various minerals that can impact fermentation.
- The fermentation times were different at the two distilleries.
- One of the worts (rye beer) was filtered after fermentation but before distillation, and the other wasn't. I'm not sure what impact this would have in a column still specifically, but it makes sense that it would be some.
In any case, the brand admits that this product launch and overall experiment is merely "the beginning of the exploration of terroir" in vodka, according to former Head of Spirit Creation and Mixology Claire Smith-Warner.

It was a terrific trip for me – y'all know how much I love distillery visits – with about five times the science as usual.
August 22, 2018
Vodka Made from Fog Water on Popular Science

In my latest story for PopularScience.com, I wrote about the new Hangar 1 Fog Point Vodka, which was diluted with fog-harvested water from San Francisco; most of it from beneath Sutro Tower on Twin Peaks.

In another deviation from their standard blend of grain spirit with grape, this product is distilled from 100% biodynamic wine from Bonny Doon – they actually purchased it in bottle, dumped the bottles and distilled.

Then the batch was diluted with 1000 liters of fog water that had been boiled and filtered through carbon.

Yesterday I visited Tilden Park in the East Bay, where a volunteer has two fog catchers hidden on the steep hills. It was unfortunately sunny, but our guide squirted water from a spray bottle to show us how the nets on the fog catcher pick up 50% of the water that passes through them – pretty impressive. The small fog catchers get from 1L per day, now up to 1.5L, and they expect them to pick up 3-5L per day in the foggiest season.

Anyway, check out the story on PopSci.com!

May 20, 2016
How Many Potatoes are in One Bottle of Vodka?

Answer: This many.

This the how many are in one bottle of Karlsson's Vodka, that is. That is one 15-pound bag of Russet potatoes and two 1-pound bags of mini-potatoes, all stacked in my extra-large salad bowl. Perhaps I need to get a real hobby.

Karlsson's uses about 17 pounds of potatoes- nearly twice as much other potato vodka brands, because Karlsson's uses small heirloom potato varietals from southern Sweden. These potatoes are rich in flavor and protein but lower in carbohydrates than traditional Russet potatoes shown above. They are less efficient for distillation than fuel potatoes- but delicious to eat and drink.

To put it in perspective, I took the picture next to an empty Karlsson's bottle:

That's a lot of potatoes! They (well not these) will be fermented, distilled up to 96% ABV, then diluted back down to 40% for bottling strength.

This post is part of a little project on potatoes and Sweden I'm doing for Karlsson's Vodka. Karlsson's Gold is a blend of seven heirloom potato vodkas.

Read about my adventures to Sweden with Karlsson's and learn how it's made here.

Related articles

The Weird History of Vodka in Sweden

October 17, 2014
Enzymes in Spirits: What Are They and What Do They Do?
In the process of making many types of alcohol enzymes are used, but I didn't know very much about them. So I decided to do some reading and share what I've learned. Or what I think I've learned anyway.

Enzymes are used in spirits production before fermentation. They are used to expose fermentable sugars in base ingredients so that they can be fermented by yeast. For example, a raw potato with yeast added to it won't produce potato beer (or not much of it). But when heated and with enzymes added then it will.

Let's review spirits production:
1. The base ingredient is prepared for fermentation. This can be as simple as crushing a grape or stalk of sugar cane, but many other raw ingredients must be prepared by methods such as malting (barley), baking (agave), heating in water (many things, called 'mashing' in whisky), and/or adding enzymes.
2. The ingredient now has its fermentable sugars exposed, so yeast can do its job and convert these sugars into alcohol.
3. The result is a beer/wine with a low percentage of alcohol.
4. The beer/wine is concentrated through distillation.
What Are Enzymes?
- Catalysts that perform and speed up chemical reactions. They are present in biological cells. They do a lot of work in nature.
- They convert molecules into other molecules. An example of this is the enzyme lactase, which breaks a lactose down into two glucose molecules. People who are lactose-intolerant do not produce the enzyme lactase so they can't process lactose.
- Enzymes aren't fuel for reactions – they're not consumed by the reaction they catalyze.
- Enzyme activity can be affected by environmental things like temperature, pH, and pressure. (For most fermentable materials, the mash of hot water and raw material is heated to very specific temperatures so that the enzymes will work.)
The enzymes are B,C,and D in this illustration. The material A is broken up. Source.

Common Uses for Enzymes

Some easy-to-understand cases where enzymes are used:
- In meat tenderizers that break down proteins into smaller proteins, making it easier to chew.
- In stain removers to break down fats or proteins on clothing.
- In digestion. From Wikipedia, "An important function of enzymes is in the digestive systems of animals. Enzymes break down large molecules (starch or proteins) into smaller ones, so they can be absorbed by the intestines. Starch molecules, for example, are too large to be absorbed from the intestine, but enzymes hydrolyze the starch chains into smaller molecules, which can then be absorbed."
Enzymes in Beer Production

The website HomeBrewTalk.com has a great, detailed chapter on enzymes in fermentation. They lay out how grains for beer are often mashed (heated with water) to two different temperatures.

Mashing is the process in which the milled grain is mixed with water. This activates enzymes that were already present in the barley seed or have been formed during the malting process. These enzymes work best in particular temperature and pH ranges. By varying the temperature of the mash, the brewer has control over the enzyme activity.

In barley starch makes up 63% – 65% of the dry weight. Starch is a polysaccharide (very large chains of glucose) which is insoluble in water. Brewer's yeast, however, can only ferment monosaccharides (glucose, fructose), disaccharides (maltose, sucrose) and trisaccharides (matotriose).

In order for that starch to be converted into water soluble sugars (fermentable and unfermentable), two processes need to happen. First the starch is gelatenized to become water soluble. For starch found in barley and malt this happens above 140ºF (60ºC). Secondly the activity of the amylase enzymes break the long chained starch molecules into shorter chains.

Enzymes in Scotch Whiskey

The malting process in scotch whiskey is a process to expose enzymes. To make malted barley, the dried grains are soaked in water so that the seeds just start to sprout, then the grain is dried to halt the process. Then when the grain is later mashed (has hot water added to it), the enzymes will convert the starches in the grains into fermentable sugars.

According to Ian Wisniewski in Michael Jackson's Whiskey,

"Growth hormones released by the grain also trigger the creation and release of enzymes that begin breaking down the cell walls and protein layers, in order to access the starch… The enzymes collectively termed 'diastase,' include alpha-amylase and beta-amylase (the latter is already present in barley). These enzymes are essential for the subsequent conversion of starch into fermentable sugars during the subsequent process of mashing."

Enzymes Used in Many Spirits

In other spirits, enzymes are added, which saves the malting step or speeds the natural reaction with enzymes naturally present. This is true in bourbon (from corn), in other spirits from grain (like vodka), and for potato vodka.

Most bourbon mashbills (recipes) contain a certain portion of malted barley. This is because the malted barley provides the rest of the batch with enzymes needed to break down the material into simpler sugars. However, in modern times many (if not all) major bourbon producers also add enzymes to the corn, wheat/rye, and malted barley mashbill to speed things up.

A good overview of the chemistry of this and list of enzymes available for purchase can be found on this IM biotech company site.

A Word on Karlsson's Vodka

I'm doing a research project on potatoes for Karlsson's Vodka, which I visited a few years ago.

From the few potato vodka distilleries that I have visited, it seems that adding enzymes is standard in the process of preparing potatoes for fermentation. So I used this project as an excuse to learn more about enzymes.

If you think about a raw vs. cooked potatoes, they get a bit sweeter after you cook them so we can guess that heat helps break down the starch into sugars- at least partially. Enzymes help with the rest.

Karlsson's uses "virgin new potatoes" to produce their vodka. These are very small, skinless potatoes that are full of flavor that translates into the final spirit.
October 7, 2014
When Vodka Was Made From Potatoes
I'm researching potatoes in a project with Karlsson's Vodka.

There is a very common misconception that most or all vodka is made from potatoes. In reality it's a tiny fraction (I heard 1% at one point), while the rest is made mostly from grains (though some is from sugar byproducts, grapes, or even milk whey). I would love to know how this became the popular idea, but I don't think I'll be able to find out.

Interestingly, from my research the potato history books skim over the history of potatoes in vodka, and the vodka books do too. But I wanted to research when potatoes were used in vodka.

Potatoes didn't come to Europe from their native Peru until around the mid-1500s, yet the first printing of the word vodka is from 1405. Distillation preceded that by at least a couple centuries.

So the original vodka (which doesn't resemble today's crisp, clean version to be sure) was definitely not made from potatoes- grains and grapes had a big head start.

Some info from Wikipedia:
- In Poland, "The late 18th century inaugurated the production of vodka from various unusual substances including even the carrot.^[21]"
- In Sweden, "Although initially a grain product, potatoes started to be used in the production in the late 18th century, and became dominant from the early 19th century.^[28]"
According to the book Vodka: A Global History by Patricia Herlihy, "In the early nineteenth century, Poland introduced the plentiful potato as an alternative base ingredient…. Between 1843 and 1851 the European potato blight severely curtailed production."

According to Nicholas Faith and Ian Wisniewski in their 1997 book Classic Vodka, potatoes first came to Poland in 1683, it wasn't until after 1764 that they began transferred from the gardens of the rich to the food of the peasants.

According to the book The Vodka Companion: A Connoisseur's Guide by Desmond Begg, "Potatoes, a cheaper raw material than wheat at the time, were first used in distillation in the 1790s."

As we'll look at in closer detail in another post, Sweden and other Scandinavian countries underwent a long puritanical/temperance movement. As part of this, the government took control of all alcohol production. And it seems that because they thought of alcohol as evil (though sometimes a necessary one), they made it all with the then-lowest-quality ingredient they could find: potatoes.

According to Classic Vodka, "Potato vodka is still subject to a certain snobbery, as though it is a consolation spirit made in the bath-tub. This misconception can be traced back to a time when potatoes were the cheapest raw material for vodka, whereas today they are generally more expensive and labor-intensive than grain.

Karlsson's Note

The ideal potatoes for producing high quantities of raw alcohol would be large and have a high starch content, but Karlssson's vodka uses tiny heirloom varieties (seven of them) in their blend of Karlssson's Gold. These are less efficient, more expensive, and they certainly produce a flavorful spirit.

Read about my trip with Karlsson's vodka here.

Related articles

The Potato, Explained
September 18, 2014
The Potato, Explained

I'm researching potatoes in a little project for Karlsson's Vodka. I've been interested in potatoes for a long time so this was the perfect excuse to learn more.

The potato is native to the Andes mountains in Peru, and was the most important crop of the Incas.

There are about 5,000 potato varieties worldwide. Three thousand of them are found in the Andes alone, and all potatoes came from this single place of origin.

What Is A Potato?

A potato is classified as a tuber. A sweet potato, on the other hand, is a root. The plants seem to have a lot in common (and the first few hundred years after they were discovered by Europeans there was a lot of confusion as to which potato was being discussed), but botanically they are quite different.

Potatoes are propagated vegetatitvely – growers don't plant seeds (that grow on poisonous cherry-tomato-like fruits above the surface in some varieties, if allowed to grow that long) but pieces of the plant itself.

According to Potato by John Reader, "A potato is a grotesquely swollen piece of stem and buds, broken off from a part of the plant's underground stems." The function of this is a back-up method of propagating, and growers take advantage of it, as replanting potato pieces produces clones of known species rather than genetically-mutatable new plants if the flowers are pollinated by insects.

Potato Nutrition

Nutritionally, a potato is nearly 80 percent water, then carbohydrates (mostly starch) and protein. It has a lower protein content compared with grains, though. In distillation of grains, distillers choose grains that are high in starch and low in protein, so this sounds like an advantage when it comes to making vodka from potatoes.

Potatoes are rich in Vitamin C and B complex vitamins, with "useful quantities" of calcium, iron, phosphorous, and potassium. You can look up the nutritional value of a potato using the USDA Nutrient Database.

Potatoes have a distinct top and bottom. Who knew?

Potatoes Used to be Poisonous

Wild potatoes are good at growing at high elevations (like the Andes) with not great weather, where grains wouldn't be successful. But their use as a food crop was not at all obvious. Potato plants evolved in regions with long dry seasons so the underground tuber was an energy storage unit to make it though the season. They even grow in regions where no perennial grasses can survive.

The tubers of wild varieties are small and bitter and can be poisonous, so nobody knows how and why they were first cultivated. This bitter, poisonous quality in potatoes comes from glycoalkaloids. It is believed this quality was reduced (something like 15-fold) by purposeful breeding of the plants.

One study found that one in region where the plants still had high levels of glycoalkaloids, natives would mix the potatoes with clay when eating them. A modern analysis of that clay showed it contained something that binds with glycoalkaloids to neutralize their effect, and because of that people could eat potatoes without getting sick.

First known illustration of the potato from 1597. This was drawn from potatoes in Poland. [source]

Potatoes Today

Potatoes are surprisingly adaptable: Today they are grown in 149 countries around the world, from latitudes 65 degrees north to 50 degrees south, from sea level to over 4000 meters.

The potato is the world's fourth-largest food crop, following rice, wheat, and corn (as of 2012. In 2008 it went corn, wheat, rice, potato.).

Karlsson's Vodka Fun Fact

This post is part of a series sponsored by Karlsson's Vodka, which is made from seven types of Swedish "new" potatoes grown in the sandy soils of Cape Bjare. I visited Cape Bjare a few years ago and wrote about how Karlsson's is made here.

September 2, 2014
Making Gin and Hophead Vodka at Anchor Distilling

This post is sponsored by Anchor Distilling, makers of Junipero gin and Genevieve genever-style gin.

Anchor Distilling currently has just three tiny stills in one corner of the large brewery on Potrero Hill in San Francisco. Two of them make their rye whiskeys and Genevieve. The other one makes Junipero gin and Hophead vodka.

In this post we'll look at the history and production of the spirits produced in one of the stills at Anchor.

Once Upon A Time

The first product released by Anchor Distilling was a 13-month aged malted rye whiskey in 1996, but by the time it was launched they had already been working on another product.

Head Distiller Bruce Joseph says, “As soon as we got our distilling procedures down we started working on Junipero right away. We took I think it was over a year and a half of experimenting before we came up with the recipe. Every Tuesday and Thursday we would meet in the lab and drink gin.”

Fritz Maytag, former owner/founder of Anchor Distilling, told a story about this testing process in an interview with Alan Krop for Mutineer Magazine back in 2012. Maytag said, “We had a team of people who’d been tasting the whiskeys the whole time. We called it the Water Committee because everything we were doing was top-secret, so we said that if anyone ever asked what we were doing we’d say we were tasting the water (for the beer) every morning.”

I asked Joseph how much assistance and consultation he and Maytag had with creating not just Junipero, but in distilling in general. He says of Maytag’s working style, “He fully throws himself into (new projects) and he would ask advice, but he also wasn’t afraid to deviate from that. He had very strong opinions about certain things. It wasn’t his way to just turn over a decision to someone from outside.”

He continues, “Fritz would throw himself into it and since he wanted to make a geneva, he bought a ticket and went to The Netherlands. Very much like he did in the early 70s when he wanted to make ales using traditional English brewing techniques. He went to breweries (in England) that weren’t even making it (that way) anymore and he’d talk to the old-timers working there.”

In April of 1996 they released Junipero, a bold, high-proof gin very much different from the less-juniper-intensive gins that had just started to change the industry.

Joseph says, “That was in the mid 1990s when some brands were trying to make lighter gins to woo vodka drinkers. But we wanted that intensity and crispness that would really stand up in a martini; not the softer rounder flavor of some other brands. ”

How Junipero is Made

There are many different ways to make gin, which is essentially a neutral spirit like vodka flavored with juniper and usually other botanicals.

The cheap and quick way to make gin is to add juniper oil and other flavorings to neutral spirit. But like most quality gins, Junipero mixes neutral spirit with real botanicals and redistills the mixture. Of course, it wouldn’t be a Fritz Maytag product if they didn’t at least consider doing it the hardest way possible.

Joseph recalls, “When we first started, Fritz was looking at producing his own neutral spirit but the amount of mash and space it would take weren’t possible.”

The base for Junipero is purchased wheat and corn spirit made elsewhere. To that they add their (top-secret) mix of botanicals and redistill it. This is performed in a hybrid-style still (a pot still with a column on top) now common in micro-distilleries for its versatility.

The Gin and Vodka Still at Anchor Distilling

Many gin brands actually make a gin concentrate in the still – they add more botanicals to get a very flavorful gin, then dilute this with both water and more neutral spirit after distillation. Other brands make separate distillations of individual or groups of botanicals, then blend these distillates together and redistill the mixture.

For Junipero, all the botanicals go into the still at the same time with the base spirit. After redistillation, only water is added; not more neutral spirit. This is usually called “one-shot” gin-making.

In the process of figuring out how to make Junipero to their liking, Joseph says they attempted putting the botanicals in a ‘basket’ in the steam part of the still (as opposed to mixed into the liquid) as some other brands do, but it wasn’t producing the flavor profile that they were seeking. He says, “We found that the intensity and crispness (we wanted) came from putting it in the still.”

Junipero is bottled at 49.3% ABV.

HOPHEAD – Flavored Vodka, Made Like Gin

In the same still used for Junipero, Hophead Hop Vodka is made. Two kinds of hops are added to neutral spirit and the combination is redistilled.

Joseph says they experimented with just soaking hops in neutral spirit to achieve the flavor but that the bitterness was “out of whack” with the flavor and aroma. So they distilled the bitterness out of it.

Still, Joseph says it wasn’t a cake walk. “It was more difficult that we thought. There’s a lot of sulfur compounds in hops.”

He didn’t reveal their solution to that problem, though he did mention an attempt at putting more sulfur-retaining copper in the still.

Hophead is a flavored vodka, made in the style of gin, tasting of the beer for which the company is famous.

HOPHEAD is bottled at 45% ABV.

This post is sponsored by Anchor Distilling, an innovative small distillery in San Francisco.

July 2, 2014