cowdery

As archivist at the Filson Historical Society for the papers of E. H. Taylor, Jr., Mike Veach discovered that Taylor favored white corn, not yellow, for his bourbon mash and used 2 1/2 times the normal amount of barley malt -- about 25% malt. With 10% rye and the rest white corn, that was Taylor's mash bill. He distilled it to about 107 proof and put it in the barrel that way, or maybe slightly reduced, aging it for about 8 years. The picture attached, courtesy of Buffalo Trace, is that recipe, last week, in the micro-distillery fermenters at the Frankfort distillery. E. H. Taylor Jr. was one of the founders of the distillery now known as Buffalo Trace, and went on to be a major figure in the American whiskey industry during the late 19th century. Buffalo Trace acquired the Old Taylor Bourbon brand from Beam Global earlier this year. The first batch of the new Old Taylor has started its journey.

Virtually all American whiskey distilleries do a first pass through a column still followed by a second pass through a pot still, known as a doubler. The second pass raises the proof slightly and "polishes" the spirit, according to distillers, by removing a few more of the undesirable congeners that for some reason don't come off in the column. To save money, whiskey distillers have experimented with omitting this second step but they didn't like the results and now everybody doubles. Is it the same for vodka? I don't really know. I assume you can pull spirit off a column still at the requisite 95% ABV+, so I'm not sure what the second distillation accomplishes. It doesn't really tell you much when a brand brags that it is distilled three or four times if you don't know what they're actually doing on each pass, what kind of equipment they're using, etc., but it's the same logic by which some micro-distillers re-distill 3rd party GNS. There is, of course, the "consumers are dumb" aspect of it, in that people seem to believe the more distillations, the better for "purity."

I can answer no 3. Disposal of spent mash is one of the biggest problems all distilleries face. If you have local ranchers who will reliably pick it up on your schedule, that is of huge value to you. If you can get them to pay for the privilege, more power to you, but you'll probably be lucky to give it away. Getting them to haul it away when you need to get rid of it is the rub and much more valuable than anything they might pay you.

It's not a micro-distillery in any sense. Their capacity will be about 2,000,000 proof gallons a year. I posted this here because micros need to pay attention to macros, since everybody plays in the same sandbox ultimately.

I mention this here because I know many ADI members do infusion, for gin, absinthe, flavored vodka and other products. Even if you don't, you should read this because it shows that the major producers are paying attention to ... you. More specifically, they are paying attention to your customers and the sorts of things you are showing that people are willing to buy. Jim Beam is introducing a new product and, in a way, a new category. It is called Red Stag by Jim Beam. There is a long-established category of flavored whiskey, which is made but not very popular. This is not flavored whiskey, at least you won't find those words on the label. This is, "Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey infused with natural flavors.” The flavor in this case is black cherry, but they can obviously do others in the future. I don't know much about their infusion process. Here is what they told me. “Red Stag is created though a unique, artisanal, natural infusion process where black cherry flavors are slowly and carefully infused into our fine, four year old bourbon.” To read more, go here.

Originally there was talk of them having their own cooperage, but that doesn't seem to be part of their immediate plans. They definitely intend to age their own product, not sell new make, so they will need a supply of barrels on day one, but day one is at least nine months away, so they aren't buying barrels yet. It's not something we talked about. I haven't talked to Independent Stave recently, and I know there are a couple of new, smaller barrel suppliers in the mix, but Bluegrass Cooperage is currently not supplying anyone except their own family, i.e., the Brown-Forman distilleries, as they are at capacity and can't really expand without developing a new facility, probably in Tennessee, but they don't have any immediate plans to do that. It's possible that wood could become a choke point for this industry although it isn't there yet, and if there is softness in the wine barrel market, then a robust whiskey industry can just pick up that slack. CMDK is putting a lot of their effort now into getting their warehouses ready to start accepting barrels and they will have seven warehouses with capacity of 20,000 barrels in each, so 140,000 barrels total, on day one. When they get up to full capacity they will be entering about 35,000 barrels a year, so you can do the math on that. What do you know? Thirty-five thousand times four (years) is ... 140,000. They also have room to build at least one more warehouse on that property and already have the pad for it, as it's a space where a warehouse had to be demolished. There is also another old distillery site nearby, now vacant, but the foundation pads are still there as well. It would appear that they intend to welcome tourists and be part of the Bourbon Trail sooner rather than later. Assuming they do start producing later this year or early in 2010, they'll probably open the tourism side next spring. It's 176 miles from Owensboro to Lexington. It's 300 miles from Lexington to Lynchburg. Kentucky promotes Kentucky, but the whiskey tourist is interested in Tennessee too, so I don't think adding Owensboro is a negative. It's an interesting area, similar to other parts of Kentucky in some ways, very different than others, and with its BBQ tradition, the river, and the fact that it's a small city as opposed to a small town like Bardstown, I think Owensboro will be a good addition to the trail. CMDK will be more like a Buffalo Trace than a Maker's Mark or Woodford Reserve, but each distillery offers something different. One thing I noticed, going there from Chicago, is that you can't get there from here, but for people coming from St. Louis and points west, Owensboro can be the gateway to the Bourbon Trail. As I'm sure you'll appreciate, Andrew, it makes including Bowling Green on the itinerary more convenient too and, like Owensboro, BG has some interesting tourism assets, like Mammoth Cave, that can plus-up a choice of BG as a destination. As I'm sure everyone here can appreciate, the only fly in CMDK's ointment will be financing, and how quickly its parent can right itself in the current economy, but they seem to be spending their money wisely so they are making the asset more valuable and assuming demand for American whiskey stays strong, I think that facility will come back into production shortly even if something goes wrong with CL/Angostura.

The same principal is taught to artists, from painters to musicians. You don't get to break the rules until you know the rules inside and out. No abstraction allowed until you master perspective. Where people in this business get into trouble is when they decide to make something a certain way and then they want to call it by a certain name, and they get angry if they find out that the rules don't allow them to make x and call it y. You can still make x, you just can't call it y. Then it's "those stupid rules," trying to keep the artist down. Ralph has done it right, even though he gets a lot of grief from ignoramuses who have no idea what the rules require, and get belligerent when he tries gently to correct them. You can make a spirit from chick peas and age it in egg crates if you want to, you just can't call it straight bourbon whiskey.

Saturday, I got a peak at what we now know is called Charles Medley Distillers Kentucky (CMDK), the restoration of the old Medley Brothers Distillery in Owensboro by Angostura. More about my trip is here and here. This is not a micro-distillery. It is a smallish bourbon distillery, built shortly after Prohibition, that operated until 1991. Charles Medley, who was its last Master Distiller, bought it then but was never able to reopen it. Last year he sold it to Angostura. I spent some time with the plant manager, Derek Schneider, who is overseeing the refurbishment now and will run the place when it opens. He said it has been slow going and they hope to be fixing up the still house in earnest by fall. Roof repair has taken a lot of attention, as almost every building sustained roof damage last year in Hurricane Ike. They've been doing a lot of that sort of thing. To rebuild the interiors of the warehouses, they are getting ricks from the Lawrenceburg, Indiana, distillery Angostura also owns. They have two steel clads that are getting new skin. About half of what they need to get the distilling part itself going is there, the rest will be new. They need new milling and grain handling, many new fermenters (Charles sold all of the cypress ones to Maker's Mark years ago), new boilers and a new beer well. The old mash cookers are still good, as are the beer still and doubler. They need all new modern process controls. They're investing about $25 MM in the restoration. It would appear that they are planning to get tourism going about the same time they get distilling going. They aren't going to wait until they have some product to sell. The refurbished distillery as currently envisioned will have a capacity of 2,000,000 proof gallons per year which, as I said, is smallish for Kentucky. I thought the people here might find this interesting, even though it is the complete opposite of what you guys are doing. Angostura plans to make Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey, but they will be primarily a commodity producer, selling in bulk to bottlers outside the USA.

Don't shed too many tears for Popcorn Sutton, or try to make him into some libertarian poster boy. He's a serial offender and, like most criminals, a selfish prick if not an actual sociopath. He does play the "Aw Shucks" country boy bit to the hilt. And don't kid yourself if you think moonshiners don't hurt people.

Packed stills were used in the 19th century, in both the United States and Canada, for making whiskey. They were popular where metals and metal-workers were scarce. One common configuration was a wooden column packed with smooth stones. Today they are popular for small scale fuel ethanol production (and they're metal, packed with metal), but not for beverage alcohol production, for the reasons listed above. With the 19th century wooden versions, I suspect they didn't worry about cleaning them. When they got to the point that they could no longer produce, they were probably just torn down and replaced.

The principal producers of GNS for the beverage industry are Grain Processing Corporation (Muscatine IA), Midwest Grain Products (Pekin IL). and Archer Daniels Midland (Peoria, IL).

I have, with mine own eyes, seen that blue bottle on the bottling line at Brown-Forman. It's not a Brown-Forman product, just a contract bottling job for them. About all that is done to industrial GNS to make it vodka is some amount of filtering. I believe Smirnoff is the only major domestic brand that has its own distillery and that's not so much because they do anything special, but because they have enough volume that they can make money doing it themselves rather than buying it. Rain Vodka is actually distilled by and at Buffalo Trace. Seagram's vodka and gin are distilled at the plant that used to be owned by Seagram's and is now owned by Angostura, in Lawrenceburg, Indiana. Again, it makes sense because of the volume. Virtually every other domestic vodka and gin is simply GNS made by ADM or one of the usual suspects and bottled (and in the case of gin, flavored with concentrate) by the ostensible producer. Many micro-distillers do the exact same thing, although some actually re-distill the GNS for reasons known only to them. I understand the marketing importance of vodka, it brings in revenue and that's important. I'm not criticizing that. I guess I will say, though, that it's one thing to fool the public, something else again to fool yourself. There are micro-distillers who genuinely make vodka from scratch and while there might be room for debate about how any plain vodka (flavored vodka being another story) can be distinctive, people who genuinely make it from scratch at least have that going for them and I will give them due respect for that. People who just put industrial GNS into a fancy bottle, blue or otherwise, well...

Many people have gone the route of buying and bottling bulk product, ostensibly until their own distillate is ready for market. One problem I see is that, if that product is a fully-aged whiskey, it will be very difficult if not impossible for you to duplicate the product you bought and if you can't, then you've defeated the purpose. I know of no one who has done it successfully except Brown-Forman, which did something like that with Woodford Reserve, although that is a unique situation in many respects and that's also a major corporation, not a micro. This also assumes that the people who say they are doing this are even telling the truth, but that's a different matter. It's a slightly different matter with vodka too and plenty of people are buying GNS, bottling it, and pretending they made it. (Have I said too much?) Vodka being what it is, the GNS produced in one still is pretty much like every other, but as others have said, what's your objective? If you intend to make a unique, "craft" product, then what have you accomplished by coming out of the box as a non-distiller marketer of a product made by somebody else?

Just FYI, Jewel is the biggest supermarket chain here in Chicago and they sell many house brand (i.e., Jewel brand) products. Although they do sell some beverages, soft drinks in addition to fruit juices, under the Jewel name, they sell no Jewel-brand beverage alcohol products. Since Jewel's products are not sold outside the Jewel chain, they can't really claim protection in the vast majority of the country, where there are no Jewel stores and where Jewel-brand products are not sold. But as instruction in the fact that nothing is ever simple, a very valuable lesson.

The key to making money, at least for the majors, is strong brands--brand awareness and brand loyalty.

The major distilled spirits producer's automated bottling lines do a compressed air blow-out immediately prior to filling. They do not rinse or do anything else.

georgiabooze does just seem to be trolling for the juvenile joy of seeing people jump, but some of the jumpers raise interesting points. Not only is it appropriate to purchase GNS if your business is making liqueurs, there is an argument to be made that it would be foolish to make liqueurs any other way. GNS (or NGS) is a commodity. You are not going to make GNS better than ADM does, and you definitely are not going to make it cheaper. I've learned a lot here about the range of business ideas that can come under the heading of spirits producer and I'm much more careful about what I criticize than I was before that learning took place. For me, if people are forthcoming and honest about what they are doing, I don't have any problem with any of it.

A small correction to the article. Most American whiskey, including most bourbon, is entered at the legal maximum of 62.5% ABV, or very near to it (e.g., 60%), but rarely as low as 55%. The big difference between American whiskey and most other whiskey is that the barrel for American whiskey is always new and charred.

Some of you may find this limited edition product from Brown-Forman's Woodford Reserve interesting. I've made three blog posts about it. They are here, here and here.

Re trademarks, one cannot trademark a descriptive term, before or after the fact. But I still don't want to get into a legal discussion here. On the issue of trademark claims regarding use of the term "craft distillery," here is my advice. Before you decide that you think you know what you can or cannot do in that regard, talk to a lawyer.

The best argument for how you pay for it is that it is all new revenue. The purpose of the new taxation tier is to promote the industry and, by so doing, increase tax revenues from a base of zero. That's the fundamental argument for the whole proposal. It's not a tax cut if there was nobody there paying any taxes in the first place.

It's spent mash, so it's spent grain and water. The yeast is dead and the alcohol is gone except for trace amounts. It's about consistency, primarily consistent pH. The big bourbon distillers tell me they don't really need it with modern technology, but they keep doing it because it's traditional and because they are loath to change anything lest they change the final product. As for adding enzymes, their use is prohibited in Scotland, permitted in the U.S. Some of the majors use them, some don't, but always supplementally. None of the majors use enzymes instead of malt.

That's true of any discussion. I can't think of an exception. Are we on the same page now?

I think we're on the same page with most of it, after a rocky start. You're right, it's not about "bulk" and never was, it's about making something v. not making it. The only bulk whiskey Chris Morris uses is whiskey Chris Morris made, so it has nothing whatsoever to do with bulk. Yes, he made it, that is, he made the Shively whiskey in the same sense that he made the Woodford whiskey. He is Master Distiller for both plants and before him, Lincoln Henderson was Master Distiller for both plants. Beam makes the same whiskey at two locations, so does Brown-Forman. The only difference is that the two Beam plants use essentially the same technology while the two B-F operations are very different, but they're both making the same whiskey and the same distiller is responsible for both of them. Yes, it's bulk whiskey if it goes from one DSP to another. I think Beam actually uses the same DSP at both locations. They're only a couple of miles apart. I don't really know the rules on that. I think the two B-F plants have different DSPs but, as I said, bulk's not really the point. It's not really a valid comparison because whiskey has personality. The whole point of GNS is that it has no personality. It's a tabula rasa. As for respecting gin and absinthe guys, I'm already there, and you can credit Melkon Khosrovian of Modern Spirits for that. He got me onboard with that a long time ago. I just wish there was a name for that, that the people who do it liked, that wasn't "distiller," but that's not a deal killer. I accept that since the United States doesn't really have a tradition in that sort of craft, there is nothing in the American lexicon, meaning the field is open. I agree that "rectification" is not the right word for that by any stretch.

WARNING, MUCH DISCUSSION OF TERMINOLOGY AHEAD. IF YOU DON'T WANT TO READ ABOUT TERMINOLOGY, TURN BACK NOW. What Paul says is absolutely correct, about how the use of terms has evolved. Rectifiers have always been middle-men. They were never distillers in the grain-to-barrel sense of the word, although some operated stills and, yes, they coined the term "rectification" for their business because they maintained that they were fixing whiskey that had been poorly made, by making it more neutral (though not necessarily GNS), then flavoring it with (I'm talking about 100 years ago) things like black tea and prune juice. After Prohibition and into the modern era, with the advent of large GNS producers and easy availability of GNS, rectifiers pretty much stopped distilling and they never had been involved in things like making good gin or absinthe. In current usage, a rectifier is a producer who basically has a tank farm and a bottling line, and at least one tank with an agitator, and they do things like make American blended whiskey from bulk straight whiskey and GNS, make gin from GNS and concentrate, and make liqueurs from GNS, concentrate and sweetener. As for the Shah crack, what I meant by that is I recognize and acknowledge the way you are using the term distiller and I have no objection to you using it that way. All I'm trying to do is point out where and under what circumstances that usage might be confusing to some people. I took a little offense at my words being labeled as "strange" and I spoke too hastily about the quote, which you quoted correctly. You are, however, taking great leaps in your characterization of Woodford Reserve, which I'll explain in a moment. As for "rectified whiskey," there was a strong effort by makers of straight whiskey, 100 years ago, to require makers of the other kind of whiskey to call their product "rectified whiskey" or even "imitation whiskey" (you can imagine how well that suggestion was received), which was when they settled on the terms "straight whiskey" and "blended whiskey." So blended whiskey, e.g., Seagram's Seven Crown, is "rectified whiskey," although the accepted term now is "blended whiskey." There is a confusing matter of semantics here, however, that bears on the Woodford story. All whiskeys except single barrel bottlings are "blended" in the dictionary sense of "to combine or mix so that the constituent parts are indistinguishable from one another." What is done with most straight whiskey also is consistent with the second dictionary definition of the verb "to blend." "To combine (varieties or grades) to obtain a mixture of a particular character, quality, or consistency." In the case of straight whiskey, it usually involves mixing whiskeys of different ages but Four Roses, for example, makes ten distinct bourbon recipes by combining two different mash bills with five different yeasts. They sell those whiskeys individually in their single barrel line, in a small combination of two to four varieties in their Small Batch line, and all ten plus age variations in their standard Yellow Label product. But Four Roses Master Distiller Jim Rutledge will take great umbrage if you call what he does "blending," even though it is, clearly, according to the plain meaning of the word. The reason is that, in the American whiskey business, "blend" is a term of art and it means mixing a small amount of one or several straight whiskeys with GNS to produce an American blended whiskey product like Seagram's Seven Crown. This is very similar to the Scottish, Irish and Canadian practice, except they use a nearly-neutral, barrel-aged whiskey instead of GNS. What Woodford does is not usual, in that they combine (notice me avoiding the word "blend") straight whiskey made at two different locations. By law, a combination of straight bourbons all made within the same state, but at different distilleries, is still considered straight bourbon. (I can't answer why "same state" is important, but that's the law.) They don't in any sense "buy bulk whiskey" since it's all part of the same company and Chris Morris supervises both plants. Jim Beam also has two distilleries making Jim Beam bourbon and a given bottle of Jim Beam white label or Jim Beam black label might contain whiskey distilled at Clermont, whiskey distilled at Boston, or some of each. And now that we're being all polite, I hope you can admit you weren't very polite in the way you told your version of the Woodford story. For the record, Chris Morris has been a friend of mine for more than 20 years. At the Woodford distillery, Brown-Forman has an operation unlike any other in the world, in that they have a series of three Scottish-made alembics (not a rectification column in the place). Although the three look the same, the first one is unique, because it has a recirculation system in it so the mash (not wash) is always moving and doesn't stick or congeal. This is the stripper or beer still. Spirit comes off that first still at only about 20% ABV. It comes off the second one at about 55%, and off the third one at a point or two below the legal maximum of 80%. It gets reduced to 62.5% for barrel entry and goes into the aging warehouses there at the distillery. Woodford uses the same mash bill and yeast as the Brown-Forman plant in Shively uses for the Old Forester brand. About the only difference is they bring the Shively spirit off the doubler at a slightly lower proof, but I don't recall exactly what. They basically wanted to make the same whiskey at both plants and see how much difference there was due to the two different technologies. They are different, but they're pretty close. By the way, Brown-Forman does not, in any of its distilleries, use enzymes. Their mash is converted to a fermentable substrate by endogenous enzyme systems only. They do not "mix ... grain with enzymes from a pail," as you so politely put it. After a couple of years of aging in the warehouses at Shively, barrels are selected to continue aging at Woodford. The creation of a batch of whiskey to be bottled as Woodford Reserve Distiller's Select starts with sampling barrels from both distilleries at about seven years. Barrels that match the standard are then combined together is four groups. The group of four must contain barrels from both distilleries but how much of it is from which distillery varies by batch. Some batches might be 75/25 from Woodford, some 75/25 from Shively, some closer to 50/50, but the characterization that it's never more than a "fraction" of the pot distilled whiskey is completely false and is, in fact, a calumny spread by competitors. It's rarely less than 25%, and often more than 75%. (The four groups are not always equal in size, so it doesn't always break down by quarters, but it's easier to explain and understand that way). That's been how Woodford has been produced since early 2003, when the first whiskey made at the Woodford plant was mature enough. Although Woodford doesn't bear an age statement, the whiskey is usually about seven years old. Woodford Reserve has been very successful. The Woodford distillery operates at capacity (Shively does not). Overall, it's probably about 50/50 in terms of what is coming from which distillery, but if Woodford keeps growing they won't be able to keep that up. In the not too distant future, they'll probably double the capacity of that plant. The Scottish manufacturer of the stills has the order and all the specifications, and Woodford has the space, they're just waiting for B-F to pull the trigger. I think that about covers it.