Alcademics

Tag: whiskey

  • Turning Whiskey Into Gas

    I wrote a story for Offrange about whiskey stillage. It is about how a couple of large distilleries – Jim Beam and Jack Daniels – are letting little critters eat their stillage and burp out methane, which is then cleaned up and used as renewable natural gas.

    The process of writing this one was a doozy – I spent so long researching it that I made less than California minimum wage on it. I started looking at the Buffalo Trace/Meridian announcement, but when I tried to get more information, both companies refused to tell me anything.

    I then started looking at corn fuel ethanol plants and how they process their stillage. They mostly make DDGS it seems, but are increasingly harvesting some other higher-value products like high-protein animal feed and corn oil.

    I learned that, due in part to regionality (where the distilleries are located) and part due to the value of corn ethanol vs bourbon, the fuel distilleries see stillage as a coproduct while the distilleries see it is a byproduct – and many distillers give it away for free to farmers to use for animal feed or to apply it as fertilizer.

    Then I further learned that in Scotland, having a renewable natural gas plant next to distilleries is pretty common, so we’re just lagging behind.

    Anyway, check out the story I spent a long time writing.

  • Jameson Irish Whiskey Distillery Visit

    In early February I visited the Jameson Irish Whiskey distillery – actually two of them.

    The original Jameson distillery is in Dublin, but it is no longer made there. In 1971 it moved to the Midleton distillery in Cork. The reason is because in the late 1960's Irish Distillers was formed, a merger of Jameson, Powers, and Cork distilleries.

    In Dublin there is a visitors' center and restaurant. We went there first. I've got to admit, they did a really good job making a non-working distillery look working, using dioramas and original distillery parts but with fake ingredients pumping through them.

    Old jameson distilleryoutside_tn

    Old jameson distillery bar2_tn

    Old jameson distillery mash tun_tn

    The next day we went to the new distillery in Cork. But actually it's the new-new distillery, located next to the old one.

    Jameson distillery cork2_tn

    Jameson distillery cork3_tn

    Here we skipped the typical tour in favor of an in-depth one. 

    Jameson Fun Facts

    • Triple-distilled, as opposed to most scotch's twice-distilled
    • The old pot still here is gargantuan, probably one of the largest in the world. That is no longer used in favor of two wash stills half the size- that are still pretty huge.
    • All of the pot-still whisky made here is made on the same four stills: two wash stills, 1 feints still, and one spirit still
    • There are also several column stills as Jameson is blended whiskey.
    • Redbreast (available in US) and Green Spot (not) are all pot-still whiskeys.
    • They also make Middleton, Powers, and Paddy here, plus a couple other brands
    • They distill Tullamore Dew here under contract
    • Most Jameson uses ex-bourbon and ex-sherry casks. Some (Rarest Reserve) uses ex-port barrels
    • Sherry butts are prepared by putting oloroso sherry (that has already aged the minimum of three years to be called sherry) into new casks for two years to prepare them.
    • Their pot-still spirit is a combination of malted and unmalted barley. If it's all pot-still whiskey, it is called "Irish pot still." Bushmills is "Irish malt" as it uses all malted barley.
    • They don't make a big deal about yeast strains here – use a "standard distilling yeast"
    • We nosed 100% malted distillate vs. malt/unmalt blend. The malted smelled more fruity and esthery than the blend
    • Due to the weather, there isn't a great temperature variation in the barrel warehouses, and only 2% angel's share per year
    • Jameson and Jameson 12 have opposite ratios of pot to column distilled spirit in them, though they don't say the ratios.
    • Jameson 18 tastes like green caramel apples
    • Jameson Rarest Vintage Reserve tastes like the inside of banana peels, coconut flakes, pineapple gum arabic. It is the yumz.
    • Only before 1800 was Irish whisky peated, and much of that would have been poteen rather than whisky. Around 1800 large-scale production became legal in Ireland and everyone moved to using coal rather than peat. So really in modern Irish whisky making there is no tradition of peating.

      Jameson distillery cork cooperage13_tn

    Jameson distillery cork warehouse2_tn

    Jameson distillery cork warehouse13_tn

  • Jura Distillery Visit- A Single Malt Scotch Whisky Distillery Tour

    Last week I visited my 50th distillery/blending house at the Isle of Jura. What made it extra special is that we hit it at 1:30 in the morning.

    Though the Isle of Jura is closer to mainland Scotland than Islay, to reach it you take either a plane or ferry to Islay then another quick ferry to Jura. (Jura is the red dot on the map below. Islay is the island to its left.)

    Jura satellite map

    (Map produced using Google Maps.)

    Jura has far fewer inhabitants than Islay- I think around 200 compared with Islay's 3500- and just one distillery compared with Islay's eight. We arrived on the island after a drive and boat trip, then had time for dinner and a visit to the pub. 

    It was after we left the pub (they kicked us out at 1:15AM) that we noticed the lights were on in the distillery. "Do you want to see it now?" asked Willie Tait, Jura's Master Distiller, to the last two journalists standing.

    "Um, yeah!" we said, and in we went.

    Nightime jura distillery visits

    (Late night in the distillery.)

    The next morning we gathered up everybody for the real tour. Tait calls Jura "A Highland whisky made on an island," which is short for "unpeated." Islay/island whiskies are known for their smoky flavor, which comes from drying sprouted barley with peat smoke.

    In the olden days when the first Jura distillery was built back in 1810, the whisky would have been heavily peated as the barley would have been dried locally.

    Jura had no distillery for a long time- the current one opened in 1963- and by then everything had changed. Most barley is dried in large commercial facilities then shipped to distilleries. Each distillery can specify the level of peatiness of their malted barley (in phenolic content), and Jura for the most part specifies none at all. 

    Malted barley jura distillerys

    (Malted barley ready for use at Jura.)

    The barley is brought to the distillery, milled to break it up, then washed with hot water to release sugars, fermented, and distilled. 

    The stills on Jura are quite tall- 28 feet- and this produces a spirit that is very light in body, emphasizing the high esther notes ("pear drops") in the whisky.

    Jura distillery stillss

    (Tall stills at Jura.)

    Jura is aged in a few kinds of wood. Much of it is what Tait called "American oak." These casks are ex-bourbon barrels that also were used to age scotch and have been rebuilt into hogshead sized barrels that are a little bigger than the bourbon ones. Unlike "ex-bourbon" barrels that are also used on Jura, the American oak barrels aren't still soaking with bourbon and don't add as much character to the spirit- they just let it age slowly without flavoring it so dramatically. Jura also uses ex-sherry butts in smaller amounts.

    Tait emphasized that with Jura the point is to get the distillation just where you want it, then not mess around with the spirit too much in the barrel. (You'll see how this is the opposite of what happens at The Dalmore in another post.) Most Jura starts off in American oak then can be finished in other casks to nudge it a little in one direction or the other.

    Jura distillery barrelss

    The main Jura bottlings are the 10 and 16 year-olds. The 10 is full of pear flavor and Tait says he would even recommend it served on the rocks as a pre-dinner aperitif. The 16 is more full-flavored and rich, striking a nice balance between friendly flavors and the depth that comes with aging.

    Jura does use some peated barley in its production. The Superstition bottling uses 13% malted barley peated to 40ppm phenol, with the rest un-peated barley. Tait calls it a gentle introduction to peated whiskies. I call it tasty. 

    The last bottling, which is new to the US market, is the Prophecy. It was distilled in 1999 from all peated barley, and aged in some Limousin oak and Oloroso sherry along with the usual American oak and ex-bourbon casks.  It's bottled at 46% and non-chill-filtered. So I guess that one is an island whisky made on an island.

    Much more to come from my trip in later posts…