Alcademics.com

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.  

Airline Drink Menus Updated: All Nippon Airlines

I updated the Airline Drink Menus page with ANA's drink menu. They are one of the few airlines to put their drink menu online as well.

Read about it here. 

A Visit to the Cointreau Distillery in Angers, France

This October I visited the Cointreau distillery in Angers, France. Angers is located southwest of Paris, about equidistant from Paris and Bordeaux. 

I hadn't realized, but Cointreau was not originally famous for orange liqueur, but for Guignolet, a cherry liqueur. Cherries were brought the region by King Rene', who lived at the Chateau D'Angers.

We visited this castle and its tapestry called The Apocalypse; the world's longest. 

(This way to the Apocalypse!)

The original Cointreau distillery was located in downtown Angers, but has since relocated. We drove to the distillery. 

There, Alfred Cointreau explained the process.

The Distillation of Cointreau

Bitter and sweet orange peels are purchased from Brazil, Africa, and Spain. The dried peels at a certain ratio, along with some fresh peels, 96 percent neutral sugar beet alcohol, and water, are placed into the stills. The peels sit on a plate in the stills to make them easier to remove after distillation. They macerate this mixture overnight before distilling.

The stills for the first distillation are shaped like water tanks, made of copper.

After the first distillation, the alcohol passes up and over the tall, curved lyne arm to the second still. 

The second still is a column. 

(The straight pipes going back to the first stills are a type of reflux.)

In this one room they make the world's supply of Cointreau- 15 million bottles annually. 

Due to local restrictions, the Cointreau for Brazil and Argentina is distilled here as usual to make a concentrated Cointreau, but then diluted and sweetened with sugar cane alcohol and sugar cane sugar, while the rest of the world gets beet alcohol/sugar. It would be fun to compare the two to see if one could detect any differences. 

Production Parameters

We were then given a talk by Cointreau's Master Distiller Bernadette Langlais. Some information learned:

• The sweet oranges lend the orangey taste; the bitter peels bring a fresh, zesty lemon/lime notes
• Bitter oranges are harvested when still green
• The peels are either dried in the sun or in ovens 
• There are 220 different essential oils in orange peels
• The bitter molecules from orange pith don't carry over during distillation. Thus they don't worry about the thickness of the peels. However, when something is just macerated (for example, limoncello) and not distilled then it is important to not get pith on the peels.
• When they add water to reduce Cointreau to proof, the essential oils in the peels cause the liqueur to louche; to get cloudy like when you add water to absinthe. They centrifuge the Cointreau to make it clear again. [*Update* This isn't quite true - see this post for clarification on the centrifuge process.]
• Of competing brands, they say that Cointreau has the highest amount of essential oils and the lowest amount of added sugar.
• The used orange peels go for cattle feed after distillation.
• Because of the volatility of the essential oils in Cointreau, bartenders should not leave a pour spout on the bottle overnight- some of the flavor will evaporate.

 History

As mentioned previously, Cointreau originally produced cherry and many other liqueurs. (Today they still produce other products at the distillery but not under their name.) 

As mentioned in this post, the Dutch were the first to make Curacao using bitter oranges from that island. When the French became famous for their liqueurs, curacao evolved into triple sec. 

Cointreau initially produced a product called curacao, and then a 'curacao triple sec' and then a 'triple sec."

Eventually many brands of triple sec came on the market. Cointreau's label used to have a big "Triple Sec" and a small "Cointreau" but later reversed their relative size. Today Cointreau doesn't even use 'triple sec' in its descriptor. 

As we know, the 'sec' refers to the dry, or less sweetened style of liqueur. Their opinion about the word 'triple' (the two arguments being either triple distillation/triple refined, or three times as orangey) is three times as concentrated orange flavor. The company had also produced a 'triple creme de menthe' and other 'triple' products, which I think backs up this argument. 

An Unexpected Flavor Trend in Copenhagen

When I visited Copenhagen twice this summer, I was surprised to find one flavor all over the drink menus: eucalyptus. 

At 1105, they serve a drink called the Lady Eucalyptus, made with eucalyptus syrup, gin, lemon, Cointreau, and egg whites. 

At Salon 39, a very creative neighborhood bar/restaurant, they make their own line of bitters. Their eucalyptus bitters I saw all over town, helping drive this trend. 

They use them in their Gin & It, as well as in their version of Sam Ross' Penicillin. 

At the bar Rouge at the Skt. Petri Hotel, the bar program changed literally between me visiting it in the afternoon and the same evening. (Rumor has it they've changed over and over in the past few years.) But the menu that they showed me during the day also had the Penicillin with eucalytpus bitters. By nighttime, it was a short menu of about eight classic cocktails.

At Umami, they also have a eucalyptus drink on the menu. I thought I stole a copy of the menu but I can't seem to find it now. 

At MASH, they use eucalyptus syrup in their Signature Margarita.  

Now I'm wishing I brought some eucalyptus bitters as a souvenir; and odd taste that unites the great bars of Copenhagen.

Rome and Amalfi Miscellany

Here are some random pictures and notes from my trip to Rome and the Amalfi Coast with Pallini Limoncello. 

Rome is a very, very crowded city, especially around tourist attractions. On our second day there we had a guide who was amazing and knew all the ways around the lines. That's the only way to do it. 

I had a gelato at San Crispino, supposedly the best in the world. I can't vouch for that, but my two flavors - whisky and honey- were delicious. 

The view from the King Victor Emmanual II memorial is great. 

(Look kids, it's the Vatican!)

The Colliseum is a lot bigger than I had imagined. I was thinking it was about three stories tall and could fit a couple thousand people. Nope. It's huge, you can see it from everywhere, and it sat 55,000 people.

 (This is the view from my hotel room on the last night, the Hotel Palazzo Manfredi. Wowza.)

(Seating went all the way up to the top. The stage at the end used to cover the whole floor. The stuff below is where the animals and gladiators were kept between fights.)

We went to a bakery called Panella that makes old Roman-style bread once used for travelers. Naturally, they were out of it on the day we went. 

Fried artichokes are a thing in Rome. We had them a few times. 

The Pantheon is an architectural marvel. This and other ancient temples only survive today because they ripped out all the pagan stuff and replaced it with Christian stuff. Good thing gods are interchangeable. 

(At night, outside.)

(Inside, daytime. There is a hole in the roof. This acts as a sundial as well.)

We stopped for an espresso nearby at Eustachio, again supposedly one of Rome's best. Their trick is to use some sort of sugar foam. Maybe they run it through the milk steamer. 

Pallini also used to make a fernet!

I bought a Crodino on the Amalfi Coast. It tastes like a non-alcoholic Campari & Soda. Delicious!

I also bought something called China Martini, which I'm guessing is a sweet vermouth derivative using quinine. 

And speaking of bitter, while at a restaurant called Sol De Riso, I tasted all the amari on the menu that I previously hadn't tried. 

• Amaro de Capo - a locally made amaro with notes of quinine, orange, and saffron. Pretty good. 
• Radis - Tastes like cola, quinine, orange. You could imagine mixing it with soda water to make a cola.
• Don Baioro - Very Chrismassy. Tastes of prune/raisin, clove, molasses, and coffee.
• Petrus - Perfumy yet incredibly bitter. We took pictures of everyone's expression while tasting it. Here was mine. 

A Trip to Italy with Pallini Limoncello

I am one lucky son-of-a-gun. This September I visited Rome and the Amalfi Coast with Pallini Limoncello. Though we began the trip in Rome and went to the Amalfi Coast later, I'll explain the process of making limoncello in the proper order. 

The Lemons of the Amalfi Coast

The lemons for Pallini are sfusato ("elongated") lemons, so-named for their tapered shape. They are also sometimes called feminine lemons because each side looks like a nipple. These are slightly different from Sorrento lemons that are more football-shaped. 

 

These lemons are low in acid; very sweet. In fact we had an unsweetened lemonade made with them. It was tart, but still drinkable. Even the pith isn't that bitter- we had a 'salad' made with these lemons soaked in balsamic vinegar and salt - and you could eat the whole thing - fruit, pith, and rind. 

But for limoncello purposes, they're interested in the skin of the lemons only. The skins of sfusato lemons are highly aromatic and rich in essential oils. 

These lemons grow along the Amalfi Coast in a most improbable way. Actually, the whole coast doesn't make much sense - it is all incredibly steep and rocky, with sharp inclines from the mountains down to the ocean. Picture the drive along Highway 1 in California if people had build houses all the way down to the ocean. 

Carved into the cliffs are terraced gardens on which they grow lemons, along with eggplants, grapes, tomatoes, olives, and everything else you can think of. It's a surprisingly productive area given that the base is just rocks. 

But the cliff-side growing arrangement means lots and lots of sunshine for these plants. The lemons grow so big and so productively that if these were just normal trees growing on their own, the branches would almost surely snap beneath the weight of the fruit.

Thus the farmers have developed a system to support the lemon tree branches, a pergola made of chestnut wood. This forms a lemon tree umbrella of sorts, with hundreds of huge lemons dangling from above. 

(Bonus cat picture!)

The terraced lemon groves present some difficulties in harvesting, as you'd imagine. The lemons are all picked by hand as they ripen, then must be carried uphill to the next road that can be pretty far when you've got a heavy crate of lemons on your back. 

 

Processing Lemons

After the lemons are harvested, they're transported by truck along the windy (and terrifying to those of us scared of heights) road to the processing center. We visited the one Pallini uses: Castier Agrumi De Riso. 

When the lemons come in to the factory, they are first washed and then sorted. The very best lemons are sold in crates to stores and restaurants. The rest are peeled to make limoncello. 

To do this, they use a machine that peels two lemons at a time. It is hand-loaded and seems to frequently jam - no wonder with sticky, oily peels involved. In this video, you can see the machine working. 

The peels that come out are then vacuum-sealed into bags and sent to Pallini to use. 

Making Limoncello

Pallini's distillery (it's not actually a distillery as they don't distill there but a rectification plant; still I'll call it a distillery for the sake of clarity) is where they make limoncello from the lemon peels.

Though once there were 30 distilleries in Rome, Pallini is the only one left. Originally, the distillery was located a few hundred yards from the Pantheon in central Rome but now it is in an industrial park-type area a good 30-40 minutes drive from the city center. 

To make the limoncello, first they soak the peels in high-proof alcohol (I think around 96%) to extract their flavor. Though they didn't tell us the exact time, I inferred the extraction takes less than a couple of days. 

Then they blend this concentrated lemon alcohol with more neutral alcohol (that is distilled from Italian sugar beet molasses), water, and a sugar syrup (made from crystallized sugar beet sugar). To make the flavor pop, they also add essential oils from the same lemons.

Somewhere in the process, they homogenize the ingredients so they retain a fresh flavor and do not separate or oxidize. We tasted several other brands of limoncello and most had a slightly musty flavor of oxidation compared to Pallini. 

Other Products

Pallini also makes a Raspicello (useful as a Chambord substitute, or perhaps in a Bramble?) and a Peachcello (for the Bellini). These are actually made by distilling the berries and peaches, and adding fruit juice or fresh berries back in at bottling time. The production seemed pretty interesting but we didn't go into it in detail.

Pallini makes around 150 products, which you'd never guess given the size of the distillery. The most famous one, however, is Sambuca Romana. They created this brand but sold it to Diageo in the 1980s. They still produce it for Diageo though. It's actually a pretty interesting product on its own; a blend of distillates from three kinds of anise, elderflower, angelica, and other herbs and spices. 

Anyway, that's it for my Pallini trip. Limoncello is an incredibly straight-forward liqueur made from very special lemons grown in an absolutely stunning place. 

Stockholm Bar Scene Report

While on a trip with Purity vodka, we were given a talk by Mathin Lundgren about the Swedish bar scene, specifically in Stockholm. This was great because I had just been to Stockholm two months earlier with Karlsson's vodka and had seen a few of the bars first-hand. 

Lundgren says the Swedish bar scene really kicked off about twn years ago, after a few Swedish bartenders moved to london and worked at LAB and other bars, then came home with new skills. More recently, other bartenders have been influenced by working at Milk & Honey and thus Sasha Petraske's influence reaches even to Sweden.

In talking about trends and developments in the Stockholm bar scene, Lundgren identified:

• A return to the respect of the career of bartending
• Hand-crafted cocktails
• Better ice (and the recognition that spirit-forward cocktails with fewer ingredients require better ice)
• Knowledge of spirits
• Better training (As of 3 years ago they have a government-sponsored, year-long education program somewhere outside of Stockholm.)
• Travel - Bartenders are traveling a lot, getting inspired by other scenes, and bringing ideas home. (And as a good example, I've now met Mathin in Sweden, Denmark, and New Orleans within three months.)
• The mixologist trend (bartenders with their heads down cranking out only one drink every five minutes while customers wait) is starting to fade
• The science/molecular trend came and went
• As modern bartenders refocus on both drinks and customer service again, a newfound respect for the older generation of working bartenders
• Bars with standards. Previously drink quality depended on who was working at the bar at the moment, whereas now bars are enforcing better training and standards so that every drink tastes good no matter who makes it.
• The return of flair, but just little flourishes of it rather than juggling.
• Connectedness of bartenders thanks to social media and good bar events. 

Other than a government-sponsored bartender training program, he could be talking about New York or San Francisco. It's a small, small world. 

A Trip to Sweden with Purity Vodka

This summer I went to Sweden (twice this year!) with Purity vodka. Purity is located not far from Malmo, across the water from Copenhagen, in a building on the estate of Ellinge Castle.

Now, Ellinge doesn't look like a typical castle, but there has been one in some form here since the early 14th century when the area belonged to Denmark. The building changed a lot over the years, but it still has a moat.

Currently the castle owners live in a big house also on the property, but rent out the castle itself for weddings and other events. I got to sleep there one night. I've never slept somewhere with a moat before, so that was awesome. 

The castle is beautifully furnished with antiques and paintings, including one of Jesus turning water into wine at a dinner party. That's not the only connection the castle has to alchemy: there has always been a distillery on the property, as was commonplace in farming areas. (The farmlands around the castle grow things like wheat, barley, and rye, but they are not used in Purity because they're not certified organic.)

Making Vodka

Purity is made in this little building just across the moat from the castle. It's a tiny building, but they only do one part of the process here. Purity is a blend of a neutral, column-distilled spirit with a flavorful house-distilled spirit, brought down to proof with a blend of natural mineral water and deionized water. At the distillery, they produce the custom distillate.

The distillate made at the castle is a blend of wheat and barley, which is combined and fermented at a brewery near Copenhagen that is certified organic. Once that mash is brought here, the work begins.

The still has a pot still base with two columns attached. The distillate passes through the pot, then continues through the columns in a batch process. Each column has eight plates in it. At each plate the spirit passing through touches it and condenses.

If my understanding of this still is correct, what makes it different from others is that 95 percent of the spirit that condenses at each plate doesn't drop down to the plate beneath it, but all the way down to the bottom of the column. They consider each plate a full distillation, so the pot, plus eight plates in each of the two columns is 17 distillations. They run this process twice, so they figure it as 34 distillations before they get the final spirit.

I don't place a lot of importance on advertised number of distillations (as opposed to the taste), but the math makes sense. 

Speaking of taste, we tasted the core spirit that comes out of the still. It is incredibly flavorful, tasting of strawberry jam, bread dough, blueberry figs, and a finish that's all herbal and wintergreen. In the mouth, a spiciness leaps out. It's quite an amazing distillate, and once I tasted it on its own I can now taste all of that in the finished bottle of Purity.

It takes them 10 hours for the first distillation, and because their cuts are so small, it takes 7 of the first distillations to get enough low wines to do the second distillation, which takes 6 hours. So that means to get one 'batch' of the flavorful spirit for Purity, it takes 76 hours. 

Purity also tastes and smells of minerals, and I suspect that is from the mineral water used to dilute it to proof. Blender Thomas Kuuttanen says that it reminds him of rain falling on brackish water, and I can totally see that.

In the process of developing Purity Kuuttanen tried to use all mineral water, but found some minerals came out of solution after bottling, and left a white ring around the neck of the bottle. His task was finding the right balance between mineral and de-ionized water so that this didn't happen. 

We were talking at the distillery about how rare it is to have more than one ingredient used in the mash of a vodka.  Purity uses wheat and barely. Reyka uses the same two ingredients. Hangar One blends grape distillate with neutral distillate (wheat I think). 

Anyway, I'll be writing a lot more about Purity for the Tasting Panel magazine, so I'll be sure to link to those in the future.