[VIDEO] How Bourbon is Made
Posted: December 8, 2014 Filed under: Art & Culture, Food & Drink | Tags: America, American Whiskey Trail, Bourbon, Distillation, Distillery, Distillery District, Jim Beam, Kentucky, Maker's Mark, NRO, VA Viper, Whiskey 2 Comments
We toured 12 distilleries in a five-day blitz, asking everyone we met to walk us through the bourbon-making process. Here, you’ll find all of the steps that go into making America’s unique take on whiskey. Watch and learn.
Via VA Viper, via The Corner
Report: Whiskey Shortage in the U.S.
Posted: May 27, 2014 Filed under: Food & Drink, U.S. News | Tags: BostInno, Bourbon whiskey, Buffalo Trace, Distillation, Shutterstock, Smithsonian, Smithsonian Magazine, Whisky 6 Comments
For BostInno, Marian White writes:
Whether you prefer your whiskey (or bourbon) on the rocks, neat, or with a diet coke, you should know that your little libation is endangered. Or as Punch so emphatically puts it, you should “brace yourself” because “the whiskey apocalypse is coming.”
“Despite the increase in distillation over the past few years, bourbon demand still outpaces supply…”
Ominous, indeed – this whiskey warning comes from Buffalo Trace, one of the oldest distilleries in the country, explains Smithsonian Magazine. Apparently, producers have seen the problem coming but “its impacts are just now beginning to hit the market and will likely only worsen” in the future reports the article. Read the rest of this entry »
Templeton Rye Distillery in Iowa is Raising Pigs to Taste Like Whiskey
Posted: May 9, 2014 Filed under: Food & Drink, U.S. News | Tags: Bacon, Distillation, Duroc, Iowa, Keith Kerkhoff, Pigs, Pork, Templeton Iowa, Templeton Rye, Whiskey 1 Comment
“This is something somebody is going to do, and we want to be at the cutting edge of it, and I think we are.”
— Distillery co-founder Keith Kerkhoff
TEMPLETON, Iowa, May 9 (UPI) — Just when it seemed like there was no way to make eating bacon an even more excessive experience, some folks in Iowa came up with a way.
The Templeton Rye Pork Project was started at the Templeton Rye Distillery in the hope of raising pigs that will taste like whiskey.
The 25 purebred Duroc pigs in the project were born in January 2014 and they are subsisting on a diet that incorporates distillery grain into their food. “As a group who appreciates both flavor and quality, we thought it would interesting to bring to market a selection of heritage breed pigs fed a diet using spent Templeton Rye mash,” according to the project’s website. Read the rest of this entry »
[VIDEO] George Washington’s Whiskey: From the History Books, to That Glass in Your Hand
Posted: February 18, 2014 Filed under: Food & Drink, History, White House | Tags: American whiskey, Distillation, George Washington, Maker's Mark, Mount Vernon, Rye whiskey, Washington, Washington Post 3 CommentsSince President George Washington’s legacy whiskey is only available locally, we’re counting on Mary Katherine Ham to keep her promise, drink some, and report first-hand.
In the meantime, here’s the scoop, with a video from Reason TV, a 2013 edition of The Washington Post, for more, see M.K.Ham’s notes:
Reason TV visited Mt. Vernon to sit in on a demonstration of Washington’s Whiskey operation
The Washington Post covered their progress in 2013:
In the fall of 1799, George Washington wrote to his nephew: “Two hundred gallons of Whiskey will be ready this day for your call, and the sooner it is taken the better, as the demand for this article (in these parts) is brisk.”
[Order the book Founding Spirits: George Washington and the Beginnings of the American Whiskey Industry from Amazon]
The whiskey Washington spoke of was produced in his own distillery, at Mount Vernon, and the popularity of the spirit (in these parts) remains. Mount Vernon historians-turned-distillers have been busy making Washington’s unaged rye whiskey, following his recipe and manual methods, since early this month and will put 1,100 bottles up for sale in April.
[TEN FACTS ABOUT WASHINGTON’S DISTILLERY]
The team, led by former Maker’s Mark master distiller Dave Pickerell, has perfected the craft since they began distilling at the old mill twice a year beginning in 2009. (A $2.1 million grant from the distilled spirits industry helped fund the project.) And the demand for their product has grown: The waiting list is more than 4,000 for this year’s batch.
Out: Buying Marijuana. In: Making Moonshine
Posted: January 27, 2014 Filed under: Art & Culture, Food & Drink, Science & Technology | Tags: Brooklyn, Chris Ellison, Discovery Channel, Distillation, Eastern Europe, Gary Robinson, Kings County Distillery, Moonshiners, New York City 3 Comments
A worker at New York’s Kings County Distillery. Before going legit with the operation, co-founder Colin Spoelman (not pictured) learned to make moonshine in his Brooklyn apartment without a permit. Courtesy of Valery Rizzo
Is it Legal? Of course not…
ALASTAIR BLAND reports: Within days after each season premiere and season finale of the Discovery Channel’s reality show “Moonshiners,” they come — a small but perceptible wave of people — to purchase suspiciously large amounts of corn, sugar and hardy strains of fermenting yeast at Austin Homebrew Supply.
“We know what they’re up to,” says Chris Ellison, the manager of the Texas store.
That is, it’s obvious they’re planning to ferment the sugars from grain or fruit juice into alcohol, then distill the resulting mid-strength beverage into high-alcohol hooch.
Making spirits at home with plans to drink it is against federal law. Only with the right permits may a person make ethanol at home, either for use strictly as fuel, or as part of a commercial endeavor — like launching a craft spirits company, of which hundreds have opened nationwide in recent years.
Yet more and more people seem to be making home moonshine, according to sources.
