Tag: whisky

  • Science of Spirits Aging on the new SevenFifty Daily

    I'm contributing to a new website called SevenFifty Daily. It's an offshoot of SevenFifty, a site/tool to make ordering alcohol for bars from distributors easier. 

    Thus, the site's content is positioned mostly for the industry- bartenders, managers, distributors, and brands. My first assignment (out of four!) was to cover a seminar at Tales of the Cocktail called Better Drinking Through Chemistry

     

    Screen Shot 2017-07-24 at 9.00.14 AM

     

    The topic was the science of barrel aging spirits – what we know about, and how brands use that information to develop topics with specific flavor profiles. 

    The seminar was pretty geeky, but the hardest part was getting up the next morning at 7AM to write it up after a full day at Tales. (If you've been, I'm sure you can sympathize.)

    Anyway, please give the story a read and check out the other content on Daily SevenFifty as they've already got quite a bit of good stuff.

     

  • 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…

  • An Auchentoshan Distillery Visit

    On the last day of my trip to Scotland with Bowmore, we went to another distillery, Auchentoshan. This distillery is located just outside of Glasgow, on a former estate.

    Auchentoshen distilery10

    Auchentoshan is in the Lowland region of Scotland, one of just five single-malt-producing distilleries there. It’s also unique as the only scotch distillery that triple distills all of its whisky. This gives it a lighter flavor profile than most single malts, and a thinner body/mouthfeel. This makes it both an entry-level whisky for drinkers new to the category, and one  that can be easily mixed into cocktails.

    Auchentoshen distillery4

    Scotch whisky distilleries usually (always?) have stills in pairs for two distillations; a smaller one for the second. Rather than adding a third still at the end of the process, Auchentoshan has an ‘intermediate still’ between the other two. 

    Auchentoshen stills1

    (I couldn't fit all three stills in the picture. They do exist, though.)

    The spirit is distilled to a high alcohol percentage before the final distillation that will make the cut of the heads and tails. (Previous to that, they're mostly concentrating alcohol. The final distillation/cut will pick out the desired flavor elements for the whisky by discarding portions of the distillate.) According to Auchentoshan's distiller Jeremy Stephens, the higher level of alcohol sitting in the still forces the volatile aromatics in the alcohol to rise to the top first, rather than the heavier, oilier compounds that they want to avoid in this whisky.

    Auchentoshen barrel aging warehouse2

    After a trip through the distillery, we took a spin through the one of the aging warehouses then went for a tasting.

    The Auchentoshan line includes the Classic, which bears no age statement but holds scotch most between five and eight years old, all aged in ex-bourbon casks. The twelve year old contains about 25% whisky aged in ex-sherry casks. We sampled the 18 and 21-year-old expressions as well, along with a 1988 Bordeaux finished bottle that I really liked. The Three Wood is matured in ex-bourbon, ex-oloroso sherry, and ex-Pedro Ximenez casks.

    Barrel aging at morrison bowmore

    And then it was on to the blending room… see the next post.

  • Aging and Terroir on Islay

     

    Bowmore barrel5


    When we last spoke, I was talking about the distillation process of Bowmore, the Islay single malt scotch whisky that I visited a few days ago. The malting and distillation are only the first two weeks in the life of a scotch whisky: the aging time in barrels is where the liquid spends the vast majority of its existence- and where it gains much of its flavor.

    At Bowmore, they use ex-bourbon barrels primarily from Heaven Hill, ex-sherry barrels, and miscellaneous ex-wine barrels for special blends.  

     

    Tasting glasses bowmore


    Different ratios and preparations of bourbon and sherry barrels are used for the various bottlings. The 12-year-old and 18-year-old expressions are a blend of scotch from ex-sherry and ex-bourbon barrels. The 15-year-old “Darkest” bottling is a 12-year-old finished for three more years in ex-sherry casks. 

    Bowmore aging warehouses on Islay are located right next to the sea. The partially-below-sea-level No.1 Vaults are the most famous, as that's where Black, White, and Gold Bowmore are from.

    No 1 malts

    The Terroir Question

    Bowmore distills with a percentage of barley malted on site, along with a majority of commercially malted barley from the mainland. Distillery Manager Eddie MacAffer said that though there are differences in the flavor profile of the peat from Islay versus the mainland, he didn’t feel they were significant.

    The aging barrels are also mixed: some Bowmore casks age on Islay and others on the mainland, but according to Eddie MacAffer this has more influence on the flavor of the final blend.

    Camper English: At Bowmore you have the combination of the local peat, local malting with the stuff from the mainland and you have aging in both locations as well. Can you taste the place in Bowmore, do you think?

    Eddie MacAffer: The fact that we do mature our whiskies in the old warehouses right beside the seaside, the sea air definitely has an influence on the maturation, with the slow, steady, and the cool situation that it's in, in my opinion definitely has an influence on the final product; the flavors and the tastes that come off from it.

    Camper English: Do you think that's where you see the most influence of the location is there, as opposed to the peat or the local malting?

    Eddie MacAffer: Obviously we  put the peatiness in , but definitely the location that it matures in is definitely gives it the biggest influence on the taste; right beside the sea. 

    Water mark on wall barrels are beneath sea level

    (Distillery Manager Eddie MacAffer shows where sea level is in the Bowmore No. 1 Vaults.)