Alcademics.com

Making Hendrick's Gin

At Tales of the Cocktail Vancouver, I stopped in to the Hendrick's Gin tasting room. I've been to about 70 million Hendrick's events, but in this one I first learned how the gin is made. 

It turns out that Hendrick's is the product of two different stills. Botanicals are infused into the spirit during distillation in different ways depending on the still.

 

 

The botanicals go into the column in the still on the left, whereas they are infused into the spirit directly in the pot in the still on the right.

The two distillates are mixed and rose and cucumber essences are added. This makes a gin concentrate. Like many other brands of gin, this concentrate is then diluted both with water and neutral spirit to bring it to the proper bottling strength.

We were able to try each of the distillates, smell the essences, and taste the concentrate.

 

 

And then it was time for drinks.   

 

 

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

 

 

Videos of Recharring Barrels at Hakushu Distillery

On my visit to the Hakushu distillery in Japan we watched a guy recharring ex-bourbon barrels. Recharring is when you refresh a barrel by burning the inside of a previously-used cask to give it additional life for aging spirits. 

In this first video, we watch the recharring process while Mike Miyamoto explains that whisky aged in recharred barrels is more astringent than whisky aged in non-recharred barrels. 

In this second video, we watch the rechar guy put out the flame with one scoop of water. 

 

A Visit to the Yamazaki Distillery in Japan

Yesterday I wrote about visiting the Hakushu distillery in Japan. Today I'll write about Suntory's other single-malt distillery, Yamazaki. It is located between Kyoto and Osaka, at the convergence of several rivers. I believe they said the distillery welcomes 100,000 visitors each year. 

(Mount Fuji as seen from the train to Kyoto.)

The Yamazaki distillery was built in 1923 and launched its first whisky, the White Label, in 1929. That whisky is still made today.

The distillery location was chosen because of its water (as are most distilleries), also sought out by Sen no Rikyo, the inventor of the Japanese tea ceremony. One of his tea houses from the 1500s still stands nearby.

 

Like at Hakushu they import malted barley from Scotland, then grind it, mash it, ferment it, distill it, and age it on site. At Yamazaki they use a combination of wooden and stainless steel washbacks (fermentation vessels). They use the same yeasts as at Hakushu, but sometimes in different proportions. 

They have six differently-shaped pairs of stills to make whiskies with many different flavor characteristics, further enhanced by aging in five different types of barrels. 

Hogsheads (reassembled ex-bourbon barrels at a larger size), puncheons (large barrels made of new American oak), and Mizunara (Japanese oak) barrels are made at the cooperage in Japan at their grain distillery.

Spanish oak sherry butts are made for them in Spain, and ex-bourbon barrels are what they are. 

Mizunara oak grows in the north of Japan, and sometimes in Hokkaido. I used to describe its flavor as similar to sandalwood incense, but on this visit I was tasting it more as a combination of sticky pine tree and cedar. Either way, it's got spice. 

They still have a cask from 1924 in the warehouse (though they've swapped out the whisky) and you can see the Cadiz sherry stamp beneath the Yamazaki one. 

We tasted whiskies aged in three types of oak: Mizunara, Spanish ex-sherry, and new American oak puncheons. 

From the Yamazaki website, "White oak adds vanilla and coconut flavours during the aging process. Tannins and other polyphenols contained in Spanish oak casks leach into the whisky, imbuing it with a deeper reddish hue compared with white oak casks. Whiskies aged in Spanish oak casks typically have fruity, chocolate notes. Over long periods of aging the Japanese oak casks add a distinctively Eastern touch to the whisky, endowing it with sweet fragrances reminiscent of incense with a hint of citrus. This unique flavour has been gaining the Yamazaki brand new adherents around the world." 

At Yamazaki they have six different still shapes, use five types of barrels, and barley at two peating levels. This adds up to 6x5x2 = 60 different whiskies produced at this distillery to be used in single malt and in blends.

Speaking of blends, the Hibiki blend is assembled at this distillery as well. (I think the lower-end blended whiskies that we don't get in the States are put together here too.) The blends have aged grain, column-distilled whiskies along with the single malts from the Hakushu and Yamazaki distilleries. 

At the distillery, there is a tasting room where you can try a variety of distillery-only products like 100% sherry cask Yamazaki the 1980s and white dog.

They also have a library of their whisky experiments.

And an advertising museum. I wish they'd bring back Uncle Torys.

 

Now that we've talking about how they make Hakushu, Yamazaki, and Hibiki, I'll get into where and how to drink them in Japan over the next few posts.

 

A Visit to the Hakushu Distillery in Japan

I visited the Hakushu distillery owned by Suntory, located in the Yamanashi prefecture, about two hours by train from Tokyo in Japan. There is a new Hakushu single malt whisky on the US market. 

As I mentioned in a previous post, Hakushu was built in 1973 and is located at a high elevation - 700 meters above sea level. (Scotland's highest distilleries are Dalwhinnie and Braeval, both about 355 meters.) On the train ride there, your ears are continually clogging as you change elevation. The distillery is on a large site to protect its water source, and doubles as a bird sanctuary. 

The Yamazaki  distillery used to grow at least some of its own grain up until around 1970, but now they import all their barley. It is grown and malted in Scotland and shipped to Japan. Suntory buys malted barley at two different peating levels; basically unpeated and at highly peated at at 25 ppm phenol content. 

They grind the malted barley on site, then put it in the mash tun with hot water to expose the fermentable sugars and transfer it to the wooden washbacks for fermentation.  They ferment it using both brewers' and distillers' yeast.

They have six pairs of stills at Hakushu;  two of them the same shape and one not currently used. Thus they have four active still shapes producing different whiskies. As there is another whisky boom, they're currently distilling 24/7. 

As Hakushu is at a very high elevation, the whisky ages more slowly with less wood influence on the spirit. Though they use five types of barrels at the other single malt distillery Yamakazi, at Hakushu they focus on two: ex-bourbon and hogshead. (Hogshead barrels are reconstructed bourbon barrels made a little larger, holding 230 liters rather than 180.) They do, however, age ex-sherry butts (Spanish oak, 480 liters), and puncheons (new American white oak, 480 liter). 

They rechar some barrels after using them to age whisky about four times, but after they rechar they only use them one more time. Distillery General Manager Mike Miyamoto says that the whisky aged in rechar barrels is more astringent than with regular ex-bourbon barrels. 

The smell of a recharred barrel is amazing! It's like campfire wood and sugars, even marshmallowish. 

At Hakushu they use only racked warehouses, in earthquake-safe metal racks that go about 13 levels high. 

Here they use peated and unpeated barley, four still shapes, and five types of casks (though they focus on two.) They say that between them (2x4x5) they make 40 different types of whisky at Hakushu. 

Regardless, to make up the Hakushu single malt they primarily include three whiskies distilled on-site:  unpeated malt distillate aged in hogshead barrels, unpeated malt distillate aged in  sherry butts, and peated malt distillate aged in  ex-bourbon barrels. 

We sampled each component separately and then the Hakushu 12 and 18 year old blends. With three widely different distillates, Hakushu is almost more of a blended malt (vatted malt) than a single malt.  

DonQ Rum Visit to Puerto Rico

This summer I visited the Destileria Serralles Puerto Rico, the home of DonQ Rum.

DonQ is distilled in the southern part of Puerto Rico, in Ponce. The distillery has been on the same site since 1865. As with most rum distilleries, it was once the site of a sugar refinery and the distillery was a small part of the overall operation. Puerto Rico stopped producing sugar in the 1980s and the distillery became the important business.

As with distilleries in the United States, during Prohibition Destileria Serralles was closed. After Prohibition ended, they rebuilt the distillery, this time with column stills to replace the previous pot stills. One of those distillation columns from 1934 is still in use today.

Making Rum

The molasses for DonQ is purchased on the open market; the low-sugar stuff from the Dominican Republic or thereabouts, and the high-test sugar-rich stuff from Gautemala. (I learned only recently that with improving technology and higher prices for sugar, they are stripping more sugar out of molasses so they need to suplement lower-quality molasses with special high-sugar stuff so that there is enough sugar in the liquid to ferment.)

The molasses is shipped into the port of Ponce and then transported to the distillery, where it is pasteurized to prevent any spontaneous fermentation.

It is then fermented in stainless steel fermenters with their own strain of yeast until it reaches 8-10 percent alcohol by volume. They distill two rums that are later blended; a "light" and "heavy" version. The lighter version ferments for a lesser time than the heavy.

The heavy rum is distilled in the original beer column (the first column of a multi-column still) from 1934. It looks just as old as it is. 

The light rum is distilled in the newer, multi-column stills.

After distillation, the rum is aged. The barrels used at DonQ are used twice before they buy them: the first time by the bourbon industry (as with most rums, tequilas, and scotch because barrels can only be used ounce for bourbon by law), but also another time for "light whiskey" which I take to mean blended whiskey like Seagram's.

Thus there should be less wood influence from these barrels than on other products. Furthermore, they reuse them about 20 times and never rechar them.

The rums are aged at a few different proofs, aged separately as light or heavy-style rums, and some is aged as a "medium" rum; a blend of the two. There are also some solera-aged rums in ex-sherry barrels, which are added to some of the blends.

Sustainability Practices

Roberto Serralles is a sixth-gernation Serralles family member who holds a PhD in environmental sciences. He is responsible for making this distillery more eco-friendly with the goal of making it waste-free. If given the chance to see him speak, I highly recommend it because he is engaging, authentic, enthusiastic, and making a real difference. Some of the innovations he has helped develop are already being copied by other distilleries. 

The DonQ website has a great overview of the sustainability practices in place, though from what we learned on-site many of these are evolving from how they are described there.

The carbon dioxide released during the fermentation process used to be captured and sold to use to carbonate sodas, but a change in legal regulations has made this undoable in the short term.

The distilled molasses "beer" is only 8-10 percent alcohol, then is distilled up to 75 - 90 percent. That leaves a lot of excess water with organic material leftover - during the height of their production 350,000 gallons of wastewater per day. 

The goal is to separate out the organic matter from the water so that you can reuse the water. First they use anaerobic digesters, in which bacteria eat the organic matter and release biogass. (I want to write a book about distillery waste and call it "Everybody Farts".) This biogass is burned to produce heat at the distillery and reduces the distillery's oil consumption by about 50 percent.

The next stage is aerobic decomposition, which further reduces the organic matter and produces brownish water. They used water this for irrigation, but as I understand it the water isn't ideal, so they are replacing this system with a new membrane filtration system that Roberto Serralles was pretty proud of.

That and other systems are in development, but some of the development has been delayed due to a significant business change. You'll learn why in tomorrow's post.

Underwater Wood Reclaimed for Boozy Use

I've noticed two different situations where trees submerged in water for a long period of time have been pulled out and put to good use in drinking situations.

The first time was at the Four Roses distillery in Kentucky. The wooden fermentation vats are made from cyprus logs that were submerged in the Suwannee River (I always that it was spelled "swanee"). Apparently the logs were cut in the 1800s, so they've been under water a very long time.

(Um, this is the inside of the fermentation vat anyway.)

The wood lasts a long time in this wet environment because the cyprus trees grew in swamps and are used to being waterlogged.

The second time waterlogged wood came to my attention was as part of a bar at a new hotel. The new hotel is the Trump Ocean Club, opening July 6th in Panama.

Tejas Restaurant’s bar is made of “cedro espino” wood, cultivated from trees preserved underwater for more than 95 years.  Since the construction of the Panama Canal – finished in 1914 – the cedar trees have been submerged in nearby Lake Gatun, a manmade reservoir used to support the Canal’s locks during dry season.

I didn't know that reclaimed underwater wood was a thing, but it turns out it may be a thing.

Zen and the Art of Bartending

This week I flew down to LA to attend the Pioneers of Mixology, a day-long seminar put on by Pernod-Ricard. We were given talks by Dushan Zaric (Employees Only, NY), Aisha Sharpe (Contemporary Cocktails), Gaz Regan (writer), Tony Conigliaro (69 Colebrooke Row, London), and Nick Strangeway (Hix, London).

Below are some of the take-home messages that I took home.

Gaz, Aisha, and Dushan kicked off the day speaking about Mindful Bartending. I'd describe the concept as happiness in your job as a bartender, reaching "the zone" feeling when you're in the weeds yet the drinks seem to mix themselves and you're smiling your way through it all- even when you're not slammed. 

Beyond feeling better about your work, you're a nicer person to your customers. So rather than specific mixological skills or particular elements of service, mindful bartending is about a positive attitude. Aisha said, "If the spiritual aspect of this is not important to you, think numbers." Basically, you'll make more money when you're nice to your customers.

Some of the ways to achieve this include:

• Doing a bit of meditation or breathing or some getting-psyched/calm ritual before the start of a shift.
• Healthy living- exercise and proper sleep.
• Thinking about someone you love or other positive thoughts when working. Infusing your drinks with good thoughts.
• Breaking patterns that build bad moods throughout the day.

I couldn't help but think about how I can use some of this philosophy in my own work, trying to find "the zone" when sending 6 hours worth of email and not writing anything. I think it's doable. 

The second talk was by Tony Conigliaro about scientific mixology. Some of the things he's been concentrating on lately include:

• In order to get the albumin egg smell out of egg whites, he rests eggs in a sealed container with some essential oils. As the egg shell is a permeable membrane, they end up taking on these scents.
• He has been studying the way scents work, with the lightest molecules reaching your nose first and heaviest later, clinging to the carrier. This is why in perfume you smell things like lemon and Bergamont, followed by rose, jasmin, and iris, with lingering notes of sandalwood or oakwood.
• He continues to experiment with his Buchi  roto-vap, low-temperature still. In England apparently it is legal to redistill something (he starts with neutral spirit and a flavor) but in the US it is not. Lately he has distilled flint stone and a barrel, and will soon write a food and drink manual to accompany the machine.
• He also distilled wood notes out of a Manhattan cocktail and then barrel aged it. His aged cocktail program is mostly bottle, rather than barrel, aging. He had his bottle-aged cocktails analyzed by gas chromatograph and you could see chemical differences between the aged and unaged Manhattan.
• He has been using the website www.FoodPairing.be, which lists which foods and drinks fit together chemically. The claim is that foods that have similar chemical structures work well together. So you might use this website to see some unusual pairings. Apparently fino sherry and peas go well together...

Last but not least was Nick Strangeway, who had the arduous task of trying to educate Californians about using local ingredients.

He made the excellent point that not only is going local ecologically good, it helps a bar center more on its local area, and hopefully restore some of the sense of the village pub as a local meeting house; the center of the community.

He talked a bit about foraging, "guerilla gardening" (spreading seeds in free space that's not your own), "yard sharing," community gardening, and made several suggestions for plants that grow well in California weather- many of them I've never heard of or seen used in a bar program.

But he also talked about preserving seasonal produce through several methods:

• Infusions and Liqueurs
• Jams and marmalade
• Shrub syrups
• Aged milk punch
• Sherbet aka oleo saccharum
• Freezing

There are tons of great books on preserving. Now I just need to plant some things that I can preserve after they grow.

All told, this was a great day of education.

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 Middleton 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.

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.

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.