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Robert Hess

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Everything posted by Robert Hess

  1. I might start with "La Maison d'Absinthe" (http://www.lamaisondabsinthe.com). Physically they run a store-front down in New Orleans, but their fulfillment warehouse (for online orders) is up in the Seattle area. They can do bulk orders of the various types of absinthe glassware, as well as get logo's printed or etched onto them. They can do the same to fountains as well if you're interested. -Robert Hess
  2. I view the "raw ingredient" clause as: A. a GREAT way to support locally produced ingredients. I am totally in favor of doing everything appropriate to support the local economy, and the local producers. As a long time member of the Slow Foods organization, I feel that it is important for all of us to do our part in finding and supporting those in our community who are producing sustainable quality products. B. totally irrelevant to CRAFT distilling. By it's very title, I would expect a "craft distiller" to be somebody who is focused first and foremost on making the best possible product, using the best possible ingredients. To limit somebody by saying "as long as they are locally produced", I feel is setting a secondary agenda. I would think it would be far better to create some sort of "Made In Washington" type of designation which could be applied on a product-by-product basis, instead of an umbrella requirement which would impact all ingredient choices made by the distiller for all the products they might make. In the UK, where they have a similar climate as we, with similar capabilities of growing things, they make their gins using internationally sourced ingredients. A big part of the reason for this is that they want to be able to pick the best possible ingredients so that they can make the best possible product. I asked the master distiller of Beefeater Gin why they don't use locally produced ingredients, and he told me it was because they weren't good enough. I explained to him about our Craft Distillers licence and its regulations, and he laughed it off as being crazy. Our craft distillers license prevents a distiller from getting the license if they: - Want to make rum - Want to make tequila (although I think that would be silly anyway) - Want to make an orange liqueur (one of the most popular liqueur flavors) - Want to make lemoncello - Want to make Absinthe - Want to make ... It essentially only allows them to make certain types of brandy, whiskey, vodka, and a gin that doesn't quite follow standard recipes. Everything else is essentially off-limits if I read the regulations correctly. I suspect that if you were to do a survey of people (who had no awareness of the current regulations) and asked them what they thought it might mean to be a "Craft Distiller", you would get statistically zero respondents who would say "use locally produced ingredients". Which would mean that not only is this definition not inherit in the label, but it also means that the consumer who sees that label won't realize that the distiller is supporting local producers, which makes it ineffective. I applaud Dry Fly for being the first distillery to market since Prohibition, and I likewise applaud the approach they have taken in their "use local" manufacturing process for their vodka, gin, and whiskey. But I think trying to codefy their business practices into the regulations for a craft distillers license is trying to kill two birds with one stone, which usually ends up missing both. Craft Distillers should be highly encouraged to "use local", and perhaps if a "Made In Washington" type of designation could be arrived at, there could even be a "fast track" process which would make it easier for a Craft Distiller to attain that designation than a non-Craft Distiller, which would promote and support the big picture in ways that the current license clearly isn't. -Robert
  3. Grehorst is correct. the 10ppm barrier isn't the issue here. Lucid was intentionally developed for an American palate, as well as to be the vanguard product to get onto the market. I don't know the full details, but I can assume that Ted was being extra careful with the wormwood just to make sure he didn't ruffle any feathers with it. As for St. George, that is a slightly atypical brand, with Lance exercising some of his famous creativity in the ingredients he chose to make it with. There are some products coming onto the market shortly which will be using more classic recipes.
  4. So the next logical step then is to see if distilling at home can be legalized for "limited personal use" just as home brewing and home winemaking is. Both of those I feel led to a boom in not only better quality wine and beer, but also into a greater appreciation and respect for it as well.
  5. Welcome Jeff! At least your name isn't Bill Grain! What part of the country are you from?
  6. Ahhh.... you are so right. I was blinded by "products ingredients", and didn't parse the "production or processing" bit :->
  7. I've been on it for several years, and get semi-regular invite requests from folks. I've personally never utilized it, and I don't recall anybody else utilizing their connection to me to "accomplish" anything. In concept I think it could be a useful tool, when and if it is used properly by it's members. It is however just one of many such "social networking" sorts of sites out there, little differentiates LinkedIn from FaceBook, or MySpace, or... except for the mindset being applied to its usage, and the types of people that it attracts. If I had to speculate, I'd say that the "future of social networking" is dependent on having such connectivity between individual not being tied to a particular service, but instead to have it freely roaming between services. We saw the same thing transpire with email about 15 years ago or so. Back then "email" was mostly confined within the services. Folks on AOL could email other folks on AOL, but not on CompuServe, or FidoNet, or... Gradually those shackles came off and so today I don't have to join several different services just because the various folks I want to communicate with belong to different services. (we now return you to your regularly scheduled distillery discussion, already in progress...)
  8. But what if you want to produce something that is made from ingredients which aren't grown in Wisconsin? Does this mean that a craft distiller should be artificially limited to what they are able to produce? I'm all in favor of bottle labeling which can proudly inform consumers of some sort of "Produced With Local Ingredients" type of concept of that product. But I don't think that this should be tied to the range of products which a craft distiller should be able to make. In fact, such labeling is far better than simply a "line item" in a regulation. Without bottle labeling, there is no consumer awareness, without extensive marketing, which the craft distiller clearly is not capable of doing. -Robert
  9. The NGS issue can be trickey. The goal of a true NGS can be its absolute neutrality of any characteristics. To achieve that takes a "big bucks" distillery. And at that level NGS becomes simply a "raw product", just as the water is which is added. Thus a "craft" distiller would want to focus on simply finding the best possible product to use. For a true NGS, it doesn't matter if it is made from grain, grapes, or whatever. That doesn't mean there isn't value to making a high-proof spirit that isn't "quite" neutral to use. In the Absinthe world there is some discussion about instead of using NGS, to use a grape spirit as the base to add an additional layer of character to the product. Likewise you can simply look at Cointreau versus Grand Marnier to see how this plays out in a liqueur. Cointreau uses NGS, Grand Marnier uses a brandy base, resulting in two similar products, which are properly used differently. I feel high-proof spirit made in a low-production still will exhibit characteristics of it's base product, and/or it's manufacture methods, which could be a good thing, or could be a bad thing, depending on what the distiller is really trying to achieve. I think it is perfectly fine for a craft distiller to choose to make their own high-proof base spirit, which might not "quite" be true NGS. In fact I think it is admireable for them to do so, but I don't think that such needs to be seen as the "definition" of a craft distiller. -Robert
  10. I think it could be argued that as volume increases the ability to do "craft" distilling eventually starts to decrease... but I get your point. I agree that the term "micro distillery" perhaps not only embodies the concept better, but is also already familiar to the consumer through the common use of "micro-brewery". Folks still refer to their beers as "craft" beers, but if you tell somebody you are a "microbrewery" that pretty much immediately know what you are talking about, and when you ask a bartender for what microbrews they have, you'll get a definate answer, while if you asked them for what "craftbeers" they had, you might confuse them. So would the terms microdistillery and microspirits be better terms to use here?
  11. Since the original poster commented that they were avoiding both copper AND aluminum, I put them down as just simply being a tad over-protective. I've seen nothing about copper toxicity, but am quite familiar with the "wives tales" about aluminum. Ok, not quite a wives tale, but the quick details are that there was a study of the brains of alzheimer patients which made note of a slightly high concentration of aluminum. They didn't attempt to say that aluminum could be a cause of alzheimers, only that it was present... of course folks jumped to conclusions and quickly through out their aluminum cookware and stopped using deoderants which contained aluminum... a second study was done to try to get a better understanding... this time however there was no indication of any abnormal aluminum concentration. After a little bit of detective work, they discovered that in the original study the dye which the researchers were using to stain the brains for observations included aluminum... :-> -Robert
  12. There are currently bills going through the House and Senate of Washington State which are trying to create a "Craft Distillers License". The license will decrease the annual fee, as well as allow a "craft distiller" to provide limited tastings and sales of their product (which currently "distillers" aren't allowed to do, although breweries and wineries can). Both bills essentially define a "craft distiller" as: "...the distillery must produce no more than 20,000 gallons of spirits per year using a pot still, and at least half of the raw materials used in the production must be grown in Washington." (the "pot still" clause is apparently going to be changed to "using low production methods"... or something like that) If you're interested in more details about these bills you can find them here: Senate Bill 6496: http://apps.leg.wa.gov/billinfo/summary.aspx?bill=6496 House Bill 2959: http://apps.leg.wa.gov/billinfo/summary.aspx?bill=2959
  13. I think it is critical that distillers have an understanding, if not a full blown appreciation, for how their product plays in a cocktail. There are several facets to this, first and foremost is just knowing "how" to make a great cocktail with your product. Many of the distillers I've been out drinking with are so laser focused on their product "straight", that when they do order a cocktail with it their lack of what makes a "great" cocktail is clearly evident. On many distillery websites, when they list their cocktail recipes, it is equally clear that they just grabbed some recipes from somewhere without really making sure that they really reflect the same quality that their product achieves. I think another important aspect is just knowing how your particular product plays in cocktails. I think it is with gin that this is the most important. I've had US gins that taste basically fine by themselves, and play well in a drink like the Pegu or Aviation, but when had in a (properly made) Martini, especially when compared side-by-side with a quinticential gin like Tanqueray or Plymouth, they are clearly missing something somewhere. -Robert
  14. Dry Fly makes both a Vodka and a Gin, and have a Bourbon and Single Malt whiskey currently aging in barrels.
  15. Making the forums totally private seems like it would be counter productive. It prevents discovery, and it prevents people from getting an idea of what will be going on here. At the same time, some of the things that may want to be discussed may be of a more restricted disclosure nature, and so should be kept only to members, and in some cases even restricted beyond that. Assuming you want to keep "registration" basically open (like it is now), then you may want to also have some additional layers of "qualification" that you set onto members, and have additional areas of the forum only open to those folks. For example, perhaps you have some mechanism to verify that somebody is an actually licensed distiller, once they've jumped through that hoop, they now have access to that section of the board?
  16. Hello! While not (yet) a practicing distiller, I am an ardent researcher into all things spirit related. My primary passion is on the more "culinary" side of things, in other words "Cocktails". I will be coming out to the upcoming "Whiskey Conference" in Kentucky, where I will be presenting a special "The Art of the Mixed Drink" seminar during the opening reception, where I will briefly describe how cocktails present a unique "celebration" of their base spirit. We will then sample several whiskey based cocktails and I'll discuss how each of them should be properly made to really allow the whiskey to shine through. My "stock" bio is as follows: Robert Hess lives and works in Seattle Washington. He traces his interest in cocktail to a childhood fascination of bartenders - who effortlessly transformed the contents of the bottles around them into gleaming jewels of refreshment. Eventually he took action on these early memories, absorbing all he could about the classic art of mixology. Using his culinary training as a canvas, he views cocktails as a cuisine with the same artistic flavor potentials as that of any French chef. He has since become a ceaseless evangelist of quality cocktails, working with restaurants, bartenders, and consumers to help them better understand how to advance their craft. He created www.DrinkBoy.com, and its associated discussion forum, to allow bartenders around the world to interact with each other and share thoughts, ideas, and experiences which would benefit everybody through an open discussion. He has since teamed up with several others across the country to found “The Museum of the American Cocktail” (www.MuseumOfTheAmericanCocktail.org), which will be opening exhibits in New Orleans, and New York, as well as holding a variety of events and seminars around the world. He also is the host and executive producer of “The Cocktail Spirit” a web-based video series being presented through the Small Screen Network (www.SmallScreenNetwork.com) to provide easily accessed information and instructions on how anybody can make great cocktails. -Robert
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