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Sour Versus Sweet

Each year Woodford Reserve releases a new limited edition product. In previous years it was a four-grain bourbon, then a bourbon finished in a Sonoma-Cutrer chardonnay cask. This year, it's a "sweet mash" bourbon.

Bourbon is usually made using the "sour mash" process. To make whiskey, you ferment grains with yeast to make a beer, then distill the beer to make whiskey. The sour mash process means you take some of the beer from one batch and add it to the next batch. This is similar to how sourdough bread is made with a "starter" that lives on from batch to batch.

For this special edition of Woodford, they skipped the sour mash part (so they're calling it "sweet"), but thinking about that made me realize I was missing a few details of the sour mash process. I wasn't sure if new yeast is added to the sour mash bourbon, or if there was enough yeast left from one batch to grow and ferment the entire next batch.

I asked Woodford's Master Distiller Chris Morris. He said, "We add new yeast to every mash at WR. The yeast is cultured fresh on a rye/malt mash which is added to the mash in the ferementer. So in this case the fresh culture was added to a sour-free mash instead of to a sour mash."

Also, in my understanding, it's not just about yeast. Bacteria or fungi carried over with the sour mash also influence the flavor, and all of these help ensure consistency from batch to batch.

But it turns out the sour versus sweet mash isn't the only difference between regular Woodford and this special edition. I sampled the sweet mash limited edition next to the standard Woodford and felt the biggest difference to my palate was a sharpness, or metallic taste that is more pronounced in the sweet mash version.

Unsure what to think about that, I looked up John Hansell's review from the Malt Advocate blog. That's where I learned the other difference- that regular Woodford is a combination of pot still and column still (most bourbon is all column still) whiskey, whereas the special edition Woodfords are all pot-still whiskey. Between these two products I was not so much tasting the difference between sour versus sweet as I was tasting the difference between the column and pot stills.

As usual in my experiments, I didn't learn what I thought I was going to, but I learned something new. Good enough.

Event: Four Roses Bourbon Tasting

I am catching up on blogging several events that took place last week. Here's one of them. I attended a Four Roses tasting event with Master Distiller Jim Rutledge at Bouron & Branch.

Four Roses has only recently become available in California, and is landing with a bang. Products hitting the market are the Straight Bourbon ("yellow label") at $19.99, the Small Batch at $35.99, and Single Barrel at $41.99. The prices are not bad, and this stuff is hugely drinkable.

Rutledge told us about the brand, and why we haven't had it in the US for so long. The brand started in the 1880s in Georgia, but the state imposed a prohibition (early), so they up and moved to Kentucky. They were one of six distilleries allowed to remain open during national Prohibition from 1920-1933, you know, to make "medicine."

After Repeal, it was the largest selling bourbon in the US. Then Seagram bought the company in 1943, and launched a blended American whisky of lower quality in the States. Somewhere in there, they decided to discontinue selling the straight bourbon in the US in favor of the blended American whisky, though the bourbon was still sold overseas. The Four Roses name was largely devalued by the cheap stuff, according to Rutledge.

Then Seagram was sold in 2002, and Kirin picked up the brand after the split with the intention of bringing the bourbon back to the States. They stopped production of the American whisky and relaunched the bourbon first in Kentucky, where it won awards right out of the gate. Now it's finally getting around to other states.

The process of making this stuff is insane. They have two mash bills (recipes with different proportions of rye, corn, and barley) and five kinds of yeast that they ferment each mash with. This results in ten different flavors (my word, not theirs) of bourbon aged in individual barrels.

For the Yellow Label, they use all ten flavors to achieve a consistent flavor profile. For the Small Batch bottling, they use five of the flavors, and for the Single Barrel, they use just one (duh).

They're also launching the "Marriage" bottling that will be different each year, featuring two flavors mixed together and bottled at cask strength. The two flavors wil be different each year to come up with a new expression. Though I didn't get a chance to try this at WhiskyFest later in the week, several people said it was wonderful.

I really enjoyed this stuff and recommend putting it on your radar. Unfortunately for the rest of the country, so far it is only available in Kentucky, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Colorado, California and Tennessee.

The Kentucky Bourbon Festival

As I've been writing about all week, I went to the Kentucky Bourbon Festival this September. I've talked about the Jim Beam and Maker's Mark distilleries, but now it's time to talk about the festival itself.

In advance of the event, people who've gone in previous years made it out to sound a bit... trashy, but I didn't see that at all. I went to several events- a bourbon dinner, a huge country music concert, a guided tasting, and the grand gala event. All were fine, and most of them hugely fun.

The Kentucky Bourbon Festival takes place each year in Bardstown, not far from Louisville. Bardstown is ridiculously adorable, the typical "small town America" you see in the movies.This year there were about 40 events ranging from county craft fair type stuff to the grand ball. On the first night we went to a dinner and cooking-with-bourbon demo. As the only vegetarian in Kentucky, I just had the sides.

The next day, after the Jim Beam distillery tour, we went to Booker Noe's house where his wife still lives for a guided tasting of the Small Batch Bourbon collection and a barbecue. Fred Noe, who lives next door, led us through the tasting. Then we all gathered 'round to watch Fred braise... some piece of meat, I can't remember, with bourbon and light it on fire. As the only vegetarian in Kentucky, I just had the sides.

That night we went to the Barrels of Country music concert, a huge event under a tent. We first had a VIP dinner (I had sides) and a few drinks before heading over. Someone named Kellie Pickler was supposed to perform but was ill, so someone else named Blake Shelton played twice as long instead. After the concert, the group went back to the hotel and had a little sing-a-long with some guys and an acoustic guitar. I haven't had that much irony-free fun in a long time.

The following morning we had lunch at Maker's Mark (I had an actual sandwich!) then some free time before the Great Kentucky Bourbon Tasting & Gala. The gala is a strange event- first everyone enters a room where all the bourbon brands have booths set up giving out tasting samples and cocktails. You get to keep the glass from each station, so people make a point out of getting as many glasses from as many different stations as possible. By the end some people are just dumping out the cocktails to get the glasses (and I hate to see good drinks go to waste) but everyone is pretty well toasted before the grand tented ball room area opens.

In the ball room there is a buffet dinner (I had a roll), an open bar, and a band playing mostly 1950's cover songs. People are dressed mostly in tuxedos and long dresses, and they start getting down on the dancefloor after the buffet is over. By the end of the night, the event goes exactly the way you'd expect it to go with people in tuxedos and an open bar. People grabbed small flags out of the table centerpieces and started dancing with them, waving them around, and generally being hilarious. It was definitely the social highlight of the week.

If you're thinking about making a trip to visit the bourbon distilleries (everyone plans vacations about distillery visits, right?) then the week of the Kentucky Bourbon Festival seems to be the perfect time to go. I *so* want to come back next year. And if I do, I'll bring snacks.

More pictures from the gala event are on my Flickr page here , and some other event pics are here.

Maker's Mark Distillery Visit

As part of a visit to the Kentucky Bourbon Festival, I visited the Jim Beam and Maker's Mark distilleries in September. Today I'll talk about visiting Maker's Mark.

The distillery has been around since 1805, but was purchased by Mr. Samuels, founder of Maker's Mark, in the early 1950's. This distillery will receive 70,000 visitors this year, and not just because they're fans of the product- this is one of the most beautiful distilleries I've ever seen. With its little bridges, common color theme, trees, and lawns it's more like a college campus. In fact when I was there in September the tours going through almost looked like summer tours for prospective students.

Maker's is different than other bourbons as it is 70% corn (all non-GMO) plus malted barley and "soft red winter wheat" instead of the rye in most other brands. Also pretty unique is that at this distillery they make only one bourbon- only one product at all.

Also at the distillery, they use an "anaerobic processor" to capture methane biogass from their waste, which allows them to reduce their natural gas use by 15-30 percent. They also sell off their spent grains for animal feed, but I'm not sure at what point that happens.

One thing I learned about Kentucky bourbon is that the products produced here are tied to the distiller who produced them (or popularized them), rather than the company. When people talk about a bourbon, they're talking about a distiller, and not usually the current one. When you talk about Jim Beam and the Small Batch Bourbon collection, people think about Booker Noe, who recently died, not so much Fred Noe who is the current voice of the company. When Fred Noe talks about the line, he talks about his father, not himself.
 
That was also the case at Maker's Mark- Master Distiller Kevin Smith said that his job is to keep Maker's Mark the same as Bill Samuels Sr. created it, and if they created a new product then it wouldn't be a brand extension, it would probably be something new. When they do special editions of Maker's with a different color of wax on the bottle, it's still the same whisky inside.

Anyway, I think it's interesting how different companies with a history are loyal to the company philosophy or the founder or the product itself.

Maker's rotates their barrels in the warehouse, and is the only bourbon distillery to still rotate all of the inventory. The barrels are first put at the top of the warehouse for three years, then spend another three at the bottom.

Beyond its flavor, Maker's is known for its branding- the iconic bottle with the red dripping wax unique to each bottle. The bottle design, wax seal, and the "maker's mark" itself were created by Mrs. Samuels, Bill Samuels' wife. The dripping wax is actually trademarked, which is why you don't see other brands doing it.

Those are all of my fun facts for now. More pictures from my Maker's Mark distillery visit are here.

On the bottling line

As part of a visit to the Kentucky Bourbon Festival, I visited the Jim Beam and Maker's Mark distilleries in September. Today I'll talk about the bottling line at Jim Beam.

I've seen a lot of bottling lines in my day, and not one of them has been interesting until this one. At Jim Beam, the huge operation and tons of machines were really cool. And loud.

They bottle something like 300 bottles of Jim Beam per minute on this line, plus other products like Canadian Club and Mount Gay Rum that may be blended and bottled on site. We walked through several rooms of machines bottling regular Jim Beam, minis, and other products. There were machines for wax dipping, ones that build boxes around the bottles, ones that fill the bottles, and labeling machines at the end. Here are a couple of videos I took.

The first video is of the line where boxes are built around the bottles of Jim Beam.

And the second one is just some fast bottling in action.

Bonus videos of a rapidly fermenting vat of what will become Jim Beam is here, and a giant box-wrapping machine here.

A visit to the Jim Beam distillery

In September I visited the Jim Beam and Maker's Mark distilleries as part of the Kentucky Bourbon Festival. For all the distilleries I've been to in 10 different countries, I'd never seen a bourbon distillery.

The Claremont Jim Beam distillery is a huge facility, and one of two where the product is distilled. They receive tons of grain daily, and distill whiskey 24 hours a day, 6 days each week. The annual output is around 6 million cases of bourbon each year. (I believe they also distill the small batch bourbon collection here- Booker's, Baker's, Knob Creek, and Basil Hayden.) Beam uses 70 warehouses to store their 1.7-1.8 million barrels of bourbon that are aging.

Beam is made from corn, rye, and barley. Interestingly, we get GMO corn in the US bourbon, but they distill, age, and bottle non-GMO spirit separately for export to Europe where they have restrictions against GMO products. (I definitely want to learn more about this so if anyone has a non-hysterical GMO book/video they can recommend let me know.)

The bourbon is first column distilled in the "beer still" that's about six stories high. It is then distilled a second time in the "doubler" which they say looks like a pot still but is continuous. (We didn't see it.)

The barrel warehouses are not only enormous, they're very tall- nine stories, with each story holding three tiers of barrels. At the top of the warehouse where it's hot, the barrels gain proof over time  as more water evaporates out of the barrel (through the wood) than spirit. At the bottom of the warehouse, the whiskey loses proof as more alcohol evaporates than water. 

When selecting barrels to use for Beam, they take barrels from each level of the warehouse to make up the final blend. For the Booker's bottling, which is cask-strength and unfiltered, they only take barrels from one middle floor.

After aging, the barrels are emptied, diluted, and bottled. You can find more pictures on my Flickr page here. In tomorrow's post, I'll talk about the bottling facility- with videos!

Is big bad?

Jordan Mackay discusses liquor at Slow Food Nation last week in San Francisco, and seems to take issue with the choices of slow spirits. Prairie Vodka is owned by Phillips Distilling, Maker's Mark Bourbon isn't made from organic corn, and 4 Copas doesn't provide enough information on their website about their organic nature. All true, but this doesn't necessarily mean these brands are greenwashing.

He then mentions small brands he wishes were represented, like Anchor Distilling, 209 Gin, Del Maguey mezcal, and Clear Creek's Eau de Vie of Douglas Fir. In the case of the fir eau de vie and mezcal, the product celebrate local traditions or ingredients and that's absolutely what Slow Food should be promoting. Good point.

In the case of the gin, at least at 209 they order in high-proof spirit from the same type of Midwestern distillery that Phillips Distilling produces before infusing it with botanicals and redistilling, and additionally you have to truck it all the way to California. It's not that 209 is a bad company- far from it- but it's not like they're growing grain in Golden Gate Park and picking juniper berries from Muir Woods to make the stuff.

I think the underlying prejudice here (not to pick on Jordan; he's just my launch point) is against large companies, whereas small companies get a break in peoples' eyes just for being small. But large companies can accomplish a lot if they want to. Herradura has some pretty major waste and water recycling facilities; bourbon barrels are shipped all over the world to age scotch, rum, and tequila; Distilled Resources and Phillips can afford to get their organic certification to produce Square One and Prairie. I don't think Prairie Vodka is trying to imply that Phillips is a green company; just that this is a green product. 4 Copas spent a ton of money getting organic certified, and they pay for farmers to get their fields certified.

We should certainly celebrate brands like Del Maguey (and grappa from Italy, Scandinavian aquavit, genever from Holland, Amarula from South Africa, etc. ) as the Slow-est of booze and use them as an example instead of Prairie and Maker's. And greenwashed brands like Vodka 360 deserve to be called out on it. But I think it's a mistake to give a free pass to small brands just because they're small and to condemn larger ones just for being big.

Itemizing

John Hansell has the lowdown on a new rye whiskey coming to market in October.

Siobhan Crosby of Imbibe Magazine is growing hops in her back yard.

Bill Dowd has the info on the "Urban Bourbon Trail" in Louisville, Kentucky.  I'm heading there next month for the Kentucky Bourbon Festival so maybe I'll see some of these spots.

Hendrick's Gin is giving away a theramin.

David Wondrich's Five Best Absinthes story from Esquire is online.