Distiller versus Still Operator.

I have been having a nice, friendly, on-line discussion with some of the members of the American Distilling Institute (ADI) about my recent post here questioning how craft the new craft distilling movement is.

In the course of that conversation, I wrote: "I am also concerned about compressing the definition of 'distiller' into somebody who operates a still. A person who runs beer through a still isn't a distiller, that person is called a still operator. Every distillery has a still operator, but it's not the distiller."

One of the participants asked me to elaborate. I did. Here is what I wrote:

First, I'm talking about at the major American whiskey producers; Jim, Jack, et al.

Second, even before the title Master Distiller was in use, every distillery had a Distiller. Every distillery also had a Still Operator. They almost never were the same person. That continues to be the case.

Third, I'm talking about the beer still, which is a continuous column still. I can't say I've ever heard anyone talk about operating the doubler.

The Distiller usually is the manager or overseer of the whole distillery. He may or may not have responsibility for the warehouses but is responsible for grain acceptance, milling, mashing, yeast preparation, fermentation, distillation, and barrel entry, as well as overall quality control of the finished product. He is there supervising all of those stages every day. Today, some Master Distillers are primarily quality control, but there is someone, maybe called the plant manager, who has all of those day-to-day responsibilities.

The Still Operator is a hand who operates the still. He starts it up, monitors it while it runs, makes periodic adjustments, and then shuts it down at the end of the run. At some distilleries (e.g., Wild Turkey), the still operator sits or stands next to the still, monitoring its gauges, listening to and feeling its rhythms, and adjusting its valves. At others (e.g. Heaven Hill), the still operator sits at a control panel in a nearby control room.

I don't mean to suggest that the tactile stuff is lost in the control room. You don't have to be sitting right next to the still to feel and hear it.

Lots of distilleries have had the same still operator or operators for decades. I've never heard of a still operator becoming a distiller.

The whole discussion on ADI Forums is here. You have to register to post, but anybody can read the postings.

Nope, Nothing Suspicious About This.

This is about Illinois government. I promise to keep it brief.

I got a Legislative Update from my State Rep, Greg Harris. It explains the House's proposal to lease the Illinois Lottery and how it differs from the governor's proposal to lease the Illinois Lottery. Here is his list of the key differences:

Among them are the inclusion of strict ethics requirements, anti pay-to-play provisions, requirements for competitive bidding of the lease, caps on transaction fees, dedicated funds to guarantee use of the proceeds of the lease only as intended and not for political purposes, protections against exploitation of poor communities by the lessor, requirements for MBE/WBE/DBE participation, and protections for lottery employees.

Despite, or perhaps because of all those explicit ethics protections, I feel like my pocket is being picked. Oh wait, state-run gambling taxes only gamblers, and I don't gamble, yet I still feel like my pocket is being picked. Why is that?

Who Makes Bulleit Bourbon?

Although I have taken some shots at the marketing of Bulleit bourbon, I've always been a fan of the product itself. It's well-made and has a distinctive taste profile. Bulleit is not a typical bourbon. The reason, we've always been told, is that the mash contains more rye than any other bourbon on the market, in the neighborhood of 35 percent.

Although there was a previous version of Bulleit made at Buffalo Trace, the current iteration has long been a product of the Four Roses Distillery in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky. When Seagram's acquired the brand, it also owned the distillery. However, when Seagram's was dismantled (2001-2002) the Bulleit brand went to Diageo while the distillery (and Four Roses brand) went to Kirin.

Then as now, Diageo had no functioning distilleries in Kentucky, so as part of the sale to Kirin it contracted for Kirin/Four Roses to supply its bourbon needs. Although that initially meant aged whiskey, it has evolved to mean new make (i.e., white dog), which Diageo barrels and ages at the old Stitzel-Weller Distillery in Shively, Kentucky, which Diageo still owns. From solid industry sources, I can tell you that Diageo also contracts with Brown-Forman, Constellation and Jim Beam for white dog.

The amounts are significant (on the order of six million proof gallons a year) and Diageo has many other needs for bourbon. It still sells I.W. Harper Bourbon in Japan and other places, though not so much in the United States. Bourbon whiskey is also the second-biggest component, after neutral spirits, in Seagram's Seven Crown American Blended Whiskey, other American blends, and even some Canadian blends. Diageo, a scotch company at heart, is much bigger in North American blends than it is in straights.

But Bulleit, because of its distinctive taste profile, was believed to be all from Four Roses, which sells about 40 percent of its output to Diageo.

So I was surprised when, in the context of an event coming up next week at the Bourbon Festival in Bardstown, a Kirin executive objected to the characterization of Bulleit as being made by Four Roses. His assertion was that since Four Roses supplies whiskey to Diageo, but can't be sure what Diageo does with it, and because it's known that Diageo gets whiskey from other sources they (Kirin/Four Roses) don't believe Bulleit is 100 percent Four Roses whiskey. Another source tells me that organoleptic testing confirms that Bulleit is not 100 percent Four Roses-made whiskey.

So I contacted Diageo, told them what I was hearing, and asked them where Bulleit is made. Here's their reply:

"Bulleit Bourbon continues to be wholly distilled at the Four Roses Distillery in Lawrenceburg, KY according to exacting standards developed by Tom Bulleit and the Bulleit Distilling Company. Bulleit Bourbon’s bold flavor is the product of a unique recipe featuring a high proportion of the rye grain and the use of a proprietary yeast culture. As with all Kentucky straight Bourbons, Bulleit Bourbon is aged in charred barrels made from new American Oak and contains absolutely no additives whatsoever."

Who is telling the truth? Your guess is as good as mine. Perhaps more interesting is why, now, is Kirin/Four Roses getting its back up about this? Is Diageo doing what Four Roses says and Four Roses is putting them on notice that if they want to continue to invoke the good name of that distillery, they better stop diluting Bulleit with whiskey made in other places? Or is something else at work here? I'm pretty much at a dead end because I take everyone at their word unless I have reliable evidence to the contrary.

I'm Still the Chicago Spirits Examiner.

I announced this back in July when it began, but now that I've been doing it for about two months, I thought I'd give you an update.

I am the Chicago Spirits Examiner on the Chicago Examiner web site. That means I examine the topic of distilled spirits, frequently from a Chicago perspective. I post short articles several times a week.

The Chicago Spirits Examiner is in the Food and Drink section of Examiner Chicago. There's a national Examiner portal and several local ones, including Chicago Examiner (I never remember which comes first, Chicago or Examiner). To go directly to the Chicago Spirits Examiner page, that is here.

I think the Examiner model is really terrific as a general interest portal, the kind of site people would set as their home page, to open every time they go online. It's a mix of news and comment, and lots of entertainment and lifestyle stuff. It's also a rich mix of syndicated and original content. The original content is what sets it apart.

One of the nice things on all of the pages, including mine, is a list of always changing headlines from feeds I've selected. You can, for example, see what John Hansell is posting on his blog without actually going there. This blog is one of the feeds. All of the feeds are adult beverage oriented (most of the time).

They also like us to do lists. I keep a running list of the last ten drinks I've had (with, I'll confess, a small amount of redaction).

You might like it. It's worth a look, anyway.

A Question for Craft Distillers: Where’s the Craft?

All of a sudden, in the past few years, small "micro" distilleries have popped up all over the country. The first ones were associated with wineries and made brandy. More recently, and in much greater numbers, people with brewery backgrounds have begun to make grain spirits.

There is no question that these operations are universally small. A few years back, one of the big distilleries tried to pose as micro, but was quickly exposed. No, the micro distilleries really are little.

But are they really craft? Are they truly artisanal?

In most cases, the answer is no. If you add the word "traditional" to the equation, that no is even more emphatic.

To reach that conclusion, compare the practices of micro-distillers to those of America’s big distilled spirits producers, whiskey-makers such as Jim Beam, Jack Daniel’s, and Wild Turkey; rum-makers such as Bacardi and Cruzan; and brandy-makers such as Gallo, Christian Brothers, and Paul Masson. Who employs more craft, those big guys or the micros?

This critique is not across the board. A small number of craft distillers take a back-to-basics approach, with no short cuts. More common are the ones who put a lot of craft emphasis on one or two parts of the process, but also use short cuts. An even larger number use every short cut they can to make products that barely meet minimum legal requirements for distilled spirits, let alone qualify as craft or artisanal.

One issue is ingredients. Rum, by law, is a distilled spirit made from sugar cane, but for hundreds of years the actual base material in rum production has been molasses, a by-product along the way from cane juice to table sugar. Molasses can be hard to handle. It’s much easier to dissolve table sugar in water and ferment that, which many so-called craft distillers do. Bacardi and Cruzan don’t, they use molasses.

But at least the table sugar-users do their own fermentation. Many of the micro distillers who make whiskey buy their wash—beer before it has been hopped and carbonated—-from a brewery. Of necessity, this means they are making malt whiskey, like they do in Scotland and Ireland, rather than corn whiskey like Jim, Jack, and all those other guys do here.

You can’t entirely blame them. It’s what their fledgling trade association tells them to do. "Why reinvent the wheel?" asks Bill Owens, President of the American Distilling Institute.

He recommends that you put your distillery next to a brewery, contract with them for wash, and start making whiskey. There’s nothing wrong with that idea, except where is the craft in buying your way past two-thirds of the process? It’s exactly like buying frozen bread dough, baking it in your oven, and calling yourself an artisan bakery.

Every industrial-scale, grain-based distiller in America, from the makers of Kentucky bourbon, to vodka-makers, to the folks who make fuel ethanol for cars, starts the process with whole grain, but not Bill’s guys. How come?

Micro distillers who make brandy and rum don’t mind fermenting, but it’s harder with grain. Fruit juice and molasses are fermentable just as they are, but grain starch is not. It must be converted. For that you need enzymes. In Scotland, the law requires distillers to use endogenous enzyme systems only. That’s a fancy way of saying you have to use malt, which is barley that has been malted, i.e., sprouted, to produce the necessary enzymes.

Some large American whiskey distillers use supplemental enzymes, which are permitted here but not universally used. No one has abandoned endogenous enzyme systems altogether except micro distillers, not because it’s better—-it isn’t-—but because it’s easier.

Another issue is equipment. Most micro distillers make a big deal about how they use pot stills, not column stills. What they actually use are hybrid stills. They are batch process, like pot stills, but instead of an alembic (the simple, one-piece still top that’s shaped like a tear drop), their pots are topped by...columns, exactly like the ones that give column stills their name.

Part of the problem is that these hybrid stills aren’t designed to make whiskey the way Americans make whiskey. They are European and designed to make brandy and other fruit spirits. They will distill a grain wash okay, into whiskey or even vodka if that’s what you want, but they can’t handle an American distiller’s beer, which contains husks and other undissolved grain solids. Even a wash made from corn and rye, instead of just malt, will give these stills fits.

Then there’s aging. Except for vodka and other clear spirits, most distilled spirits are aged in oak barrels, typically for years, occasionally for decades. Most micro-distillers can’t wait that long, so they sell unaged or very lightly aged products. There’s nothing wrong with that. There always have been unaged and young spirits sold, but aging is another part of the craft and most micro distillers give it short shrift. Virtually all bourbon whiskey is aged for more than four years. I know of only one micro distillery whiskey aged that long and it costs $300 a bottle.

It gets worse. Some micro distillers don’t make anything. They buy bulk spirits and bottle them. They have a distillery, or plan to; it’s making something, or will soon. The bulk goods are just a bridge until their own product is ready for sale, they say, but several have been saying that for years and not exactly publicizing how the only product they sell is one they didn’t make and probably can never duplicate.

The moral of this story is caveat emptor, let the buyer beware, especially if you think you are buying an artisanal product and that matters to you. Do some research, ask questions, be skeptical. Most producers won’t lie to you outright, but you have to ask the right questions and listen to the answers very carefully.

Do these practices make these distillers, or their products, bad? Not necessarily, but that’s not the question. The question is, are these practices craft? Are they artisanal? Are they traditional? That’s where many of these new micro distilleries have issues.

I Taste Some 22-Year-Old Bourbon from 1938.

I attended an event in Louisville Tuesday evening, at the Filson Historical Society (housed in a very cool, old mansion) on the occasion of George Garvin Brown’s 162nd birthday. Brown launched what became the Brown-Forman company when he created the Old Forester Bourbon brand in 1870.

Brown-Forman typically launches the new edition of Old Forester Birthday Bourbon on GGB’s birthday, but this year was different. In honor of the 75th anniversary of the repeal of Prohibition (on December 5th of this year), they are releasing Old Forester Repeal Bourbon, a 10-year-old expression of Old Forester in a 375ml replica of a Prohibition-era medicinal whiskey bottle.

It comes in a gift set that also includes a commemorative tasting glass and a scroll of the 21st Amendment itself. It will be priced at about $25 and should appear in stores in late November.

The 2008 Old Forester Birthday Bourbon is expected to debut in mid-October.

Since Brown-Forman received one of only six medicinal whiskey licenses issued by the federal government during Prohibition, Old Forester is unique. It is the only American whiskey that has been sold continuously, under the same name and made by the same company, for 138 years.

Mike Veach, who spoke at the event, made an interesting point. The 18th Amendment was the only part of the U.S. Constitution that took a right away. That very un-American act was corrected by the 21st Amendment.

Although we tasted some of the new Old Forester Repeal Bourbon, as well as standard Old Forester and Old Forester Signature (the 100° proof expression), what got me to the event was a chance to taste three historic whiskeys, one from each of the three Brown-Forman distilleries where Old Forester has been made.

The oldest was a bourbon distilled in 1916 at St. Mary, Kentucky, and bottled in 1938, so it was 22 years old.

How did it taste? It was not overly wooded, as so many of the Prohibition-era medicinal whiskeys are. It was quite good, totally drinkable. The nose was incredible. We could smell it as we were walking up the stairs to the room. If you didn't know it was a bourbon, you might think it was a rye, with that floral, as opposed to spicy, quality ryes sometimes have. It was especially rich with top notes of anise, toffee and citrus, which complemented a middle of dark fruit.

The most prominent feature, as is often the case with older bottlings, was that wintergreen taste and aroma that comes from the 200+ year old trees used for the barrels. You get that in some post-prohibition bottlings too, through the 1960s, but you never get it today. The new Repeal Bourbon, chosen to resemble the 1916-1938, is mainly lacking that.

They are going to have some Repeal-related content on the web but it doesn't appear to be up yet, but everything you might want to know about Old Forester is probably here.

The Right Stuff.

I spent some time with Fred Noe recently, while he was here in Chicago for some promotional appearances. I already told you about our rye balls discussion.

Fred was in town to promote a couple of different items, including Beam’s "Here's To The Stuff Inside" PR campaign. (I told you about it back in May, when they launched it.) Because we were just talking, I didn’t invite the whole PR onslaught, but I was curious to know what, in that campaign, had made a personal impression on him, as it covers a lot of ground.

We talked briefly about their chiming in to preserve the name of Wrigley Field, which may make more sense when you understand that Beam is as much a Chicago company as it is a Kentucky one. The distilleries are there but the corporate offices, along with sales and marketing, have been here in Chicago since the end of Prohibition, originally downtown, now in Deerfield.

But clearly what has touched Fred the most is Operation Homefront. "It’s a great thing, people doing the right things for the right reasons," said Fred. Operation Homefront helps American military families with emergency assistance, especially with needs that might otherwise fall through the cracks. "Some family needs a water heater," said Fred, "they get it for them."

Operation Homefront also provides food, baby care, car repairs, financial assistance, and computers to the families of our troops. It’s an authentic grassroots movement of more than 4,000 volunteers.

One way Beam has raised money for Operation Homefront is through the sale of Jim Beam in special commemorative bottles. Fred was thrilled to present them a check for $250,000, and at the Indy 500 no less. “There are lots of organizations, but this one really gets it done,” he said.

No doubt Fred Noe has an unusual job, but I can see that he really likes being able to represent the company that way. As he says, people doing the right things for the right reasons. If that leads you to believe they probably make their whiskey the same way, so be it.