Camper English's Blog, page 47

Thinking Thoughts About Bottled in Bond

Though I know the rules for bottled in bond whiskey and other spirits, in my head the whole thing operated differently than it does in reality. This came to light for me on a visit to the Cascade Hollow Distilling Co., home of George Dickel. The trip I took was to celebrate their bottled in bond (BIB) release. 

I knew that BIB is a guarantee of certain standards - the spirit must be distilled in one season by one distiller at one distillery, be a minimum of 4 years old and bottled at 50% ABV - but I thought it went further than that. In my head the government had an active role in overseeing the bonded warehouse and maybe observing the actual bottling, and that was the point of the whole thing. How naive!

As George Dickel distiller Nicole Austin pointed out, all pre-taxed liquor warehouses are bonded warehouses. So any non-blended whiskey over 4 years old bottled at 50% can be stuck in a bottle and labelled as BIB; there's no special extra process to it. Most single barrel bottlings would meet that if they were bottled at 50% (not that there is any real definition of single barrel).  BIB is just a weirdly specific set of rules.

Some Specifics

Speaking of rules, there are some neat things in the wording of bottled in bond spirits on the government's website that I don't usually see spelled out.

Stored for at least four years in wooden containers wherein the spirits have been in contact with the wood surface except for gin and vodka which must be stored for at least four years in wooden containers coated or lined with paraffin or other substance which will preclude contact of the spirits with the wood surface;

So gin and vodka can be bottled in bond if they're stored in non-reactive wood containers. No wonder we don't see any of those on the market. 

Unaltered from their original condition or character by the addition or subtraction of any substance other than by filtration, chill proofing, or other physical treatments (which do not involve the addition of any substance which will remain incorporated in the finished product or result in a change in class or type);

They can't have any additives. I assumed this, but never see it spelled out when reading about BIB products. I guess because mostly BIB products are straight bourbon and can't have additives anyway. 

 

Putting Bottled in Bond in Context

We frequently hear the BIB Act of 1897 as the first first consumer protection law, predating the Pure Food and Drug Act by nearly a decade. In an era when many whiskeys were blended and adulterated, this was a guarantee to the consumer of certain minimums.

But also the BIB Act seems to have changed the way whiskey was stored: pre-tax rather than post-tax, in bonded warehouses. 

As Wikipedia states, "The practice was also connected to tax law, which provided the primary incentive for distilleries to participate. Distilleries were allowed to delay payment of the excise tax on the stored whiskey until the aging of the whiskey was completed, and the supervision of the warehouse ensured proper accounting and the eventual collection of the tax." 

That's a huge deal, tax-wise. If you're aging spirits, imagine having to pay tax on every gallon of whiskey distilled four-plus years before you've sold it. That's a huge burden and this act would have been a huge relief.

[Note that I haven't researched if there was a way to defer tax payment previous to the BIB act, it's possible that this wasn't the first act to defer taxes but it could be.] 

So for me, understanding the tax part puts it all together. In 1897 the BIB law guaranteed an unadulterated product to the consumer, and incentivized it to the producer via the tax deferment. I needed to understand both parts of this. 

Today most mass market bourbon is 4+ years old and additive-free anyway, the only difference between regular and BIB bottlings is that most brands are blends of various ages and bottled at various proofs. I wouldn't consider bottled in bond products to be a higher statement of quality these days; just a quirky set of standards. 

 

 

 

A Daylong Visit to the George Dickel Distillery

I first visited the Cascade Hollow Distillery aka George Dickel in 2012, and rereading my previous post it seems a lot has changed since then! 

This May (2019) I had the opportunity to revisit the distillery in advance of their release of the new Dickel Bottled in Bond Tennessee Whiskey. For the trip they had us "intern" with various members of the production staff. We didn't really have to do anything (so don't worry I didn't screw up the whiskey); we just got to spend time with team members and were able to ask lots of questions. 

At Dickel they distill 6 days per week, on two shifts per day. They shut down distillation every night, unlike larger distilleries that run 24/7. Dickel is expanding but it will take a lot of work to expand to 24/7 production; it didn't sound like that was going to happen in the next couple of years anyway. 

They run two staff shifts, roughly  6AM-2PM and 2PM to 10PM. 

Grinding and Cooking

The Dickel Tennessee whiskey mashbill is 84% corn and 8% each rye and malted barley. Their rye is made at MGP so for the most part they're just making the same thing every day. Distiller Nicole Austin said that though you'd think she'd be in the distillery actively tasting and blending and such, all the work you'd assume she does daily only takes a few weeks per year. The rest of the time seems to be administration, marketing, research and other tasks related to running the brand. 

They receive two truckloads of grain per day. The grains are measured for moisture content to ensure it's less than 15%. They said they've only had one bad load of grains in 15 years, and that was due to someone at the grain producer accidentally mixing in wheat. 

The corn they mill (grind up) in advance of using. The corn, malt, and rye are each milled separately then combined by weight into the cooker at different times. The guy in charge of this "drops" grains into the cookers located on the floor below.

They go in order : pre-malt, corn, then rye then the rest of the malt. I missed what the pre-malt is for. But the order is because the corn needs a hard boil to cook it properly. After cooking, the liquid cools a bit before rye is added ("We don't want to cook the crap out of it" because it's there for flavor, says Austin.). Then most of the malted barley is added- they don't want it too hot because that would kill the enzymes in the malt. Each of these stages begins or ends when the mash reaches certain temperatures. 

They also add liquid enzymes to the mash - it looked to be about 4 cups worth of liquid to each cooker. 

The mashing/cooking process takes 3-4 hours. 

Some of the sour mash, the yeasty water from the previous distillation, goes into the cookers along with fresh water, and some goes into the fermenters directly. They say splitting it in these two stages is just because of volume, not for any flavor reason. I have another post just about the sour mash process going up later this week. 

 

Fermentation

Grains and water come out of the cooker at 150 (Fahrenheit, I think) and are cooled to 72 as they go into the fermenter so that the hot water doesn't kill the yeast. They use a custom made dry yeast that's propagated elsewhere. 

They have 3 sets (distilling 3 vats daily) of 3 vats. Because of the 6 day workweek, they have "3 day beers" and "4 day beers" for the fermentation that needs to go an extra day. They said the only difference between them is the fermentation temperature is slightly different to allow for the extra time. 

The fermentation expert also takes samples of the uncooked, cooked mash and the backset (sour mash) and measures/makes notes of their pH, total acid, and brix. After fermentation the beer is 10% ABV. 

 

Distillation

It takes 4.5 hours to distill 1 fermenter. 

The distillation column has 19 plates. The mash goes in at the 17th plate near the top and drips down the column as it removes alcohol from the mixture. The alcohol passes up through the column and comes off the top above the 19th plate. 

The alcohol comes off the still at 135 proof, then it is redistilled in the double up to 150 proof. 

After the spirit comes off the still, it is run through a copper reactor filled with copper "Raschig rings" before it goes into the doubler. Though I'm not positive, I think in other distilleries the top of the still above where solids enter is filled with these copper rings, rather than being in a separate container as at Dickel. 

Because they shut down the plant each night, the heads and tails at the beginning and end of each day are simply redistilled in the next run. 

The byproducts of distillation are the wet grains and the yeasty liquids. Some of the liquids go into the sour mash. The wet grains are sold as animal feed. (At some distilleries like MGP the drains are dried first. Here they are not.)

 

Charcoal Filtration

Because this is Tennessee Whiskey, it is filtered through charcoal before aging, like at Jack Daniel's. But unlike at JD, they chill the whiskey to 42 (Fahrenheit, I think) before running it through the charcoal. The chilling increases flocculation.  

The sugar maple charcoal is prepared on site - burned and then extinguished at a certain point. 

It takes about 24 hours to filter one day's worth of distillate. The distillate comes off the still at 150 proof, is reduced to 126.5 before charcoal filtration, and comes out at 125 proof. 

Virgin wool blankets line the bottom of the filtration tubs to collect the charcoal dust. In my last visit to Dickel, I noted that they fill the charcoal vats up with liquid then let it drip out rather than having it drip into and out of the vats continually. I'm not sure that's the case anymore, though I could be mistaken. 

Austin gave more detail on the charcoal filtration process. She said that the liquid comes off the still very oily, buttery, and fruity smelling with popcorn notes due to their distilling with low reflux. Filtration through charcoal is a selective filtration that takes out the heavy oily notes while leaving the fruity ones in the spirit. So according to Austin they can distill in a way that builds lots of character because the charcoal filtration takes out notes that they don't want in the final spirit. 

 

 

Aging and Warehouses

Barrels are filled at the distillery and then are delivered to the warehouses. We took a hay ride up the road behind the distillery to where several warehouses are located - and where many more are being built. 

Most of the time this distillery produces their Tennessee whiskey, just making the same mashbill daily. But distiller Austin has been doing some experiments. She said they're "exploring" making their own rye "to see if there is a reason to do it" themselves, rather than continuing to use MGP's rye in their bottling. They've also tried some other mashbills recently, but I don't know if any new products are in the pipeline.

The warehouses are all single-storey warehouses 6 barrels high. There is only about  5 degree temperature variation between the bottom and top of these warehouses, unlike the 6 storey warehouses many bourbon producers use. The newer warehouses are palatized, meaning the barrels stand on their flat ends rather than on their sides. This is more space efficient than rickhouses. 

The angel's share takes about 50% of the liquid in each barrel after 7 years. And because they don't combine and refill barrels, the angel's share is even more as the barrels get emptier. They told me that each 9 year old barrel makes between 10 and 16 12-packs of whiskey. Not a lot! 

Thanks to George Dickel for a great visit! 

Stay tuned for a couple more posts related to my visit. 

An Oakland Gin Distilled Through Hog Island Oysters

Oakland Spirits Co., already known for their Automatic Sea Gin distilled with foraged nori in the mix, have just released Automatic Halfshell Gin made in cooperation with Hog Island Oyster Co.  

Hog Island provided the distillery with 200 live Sweetwater oysters from Tomales Bay, which the distillers put into bags, covered with a plate, and ran over with a forklift to crush them before throwing them into the still - shells, meat, 'liquor' and all.

Like the other gins made at OsCo, a grape spirit base is redistilled with botanicals; some in the pot with the alcohol and more delicate flavors in the basket in the steam vapor.

To round out Halfshell gin, they added the foraged nori again, and also foraged kombu from the same provider Sully Farms. Non-ocean botanicals included fresh celery root, tarragon, fresh and dried lemon peel, and chicory. They also used a lot of juniper as would be typical of a London dry style gin, said  Head of Sales Michael Pierce, so that it could be the most versatile gin for Hog Island, used in the well. 

The idea came together from some conversations between the distillery (already known for their willingness to collaborate as they did with their Trade Winds flavored brandy with East Bay Spice Company) and Hog Island Bar Manager Saul Ranella. 

While the gin was made for Hog Island, it's not exclusive to the bar. Each batch of OsCo's gins are about 384 liters, and Hog Island bought half in advance, about 15 12-liter cases. Hog Island has taken their delivery so you can find it in the Ferry Building, and Pierce has begun selling the gin to bars and liquor stores this week.

 

Osco's Halfshell gin is already available for purchase at Leger's Liquors in the East Bay and Gemini Bottle Co in San Francisco, and available for sipping at accounts including Osco's tasting room, East Bay Spice Company, Commis, Mago, Luka's Taproom in the East Bay, and Benjamin Cooper and Black Sands in San Francisco. 

As for the taste of the gin, Pierce says that it presents as gin with a "Coastal funk" on the nose from the nori and kombu, while the oyster qualities including shell minerality and unctuous/creamy texture come in on the palate. The finish brings the juniper, tarragon, and lemon. 

Founder Adam Nelson did eight test batches on their small still to get the flavor combination right. Those oysters were cracked open with a hammer, which is what they were trying to replicate with the forklift in the big batch.

When going from the small glass stills to the larger copper one, Pierce says that some of the fresh oyster quality was reduced in the bottled product, but when mixed with typical gin mixers (tonic, vermouth, Chartreuse, Luxardo) then the oyster note pops - perhaps because of the sugar in those drinks. 

Botanicals and Oysters in the Test Still

 

There has been a big trend in both gin and Islay whiskies of pairing spirits and cocktails with oysters, usually just in tastings, but in a few cases right in the bottle. Japanese brand Sakurao Gin is distilled through oyster shells. Scottish brand Isle of Bute Oyster Gin appears to also be distilled through whole oysters, like OsCo's. 

Closer to home, a few years back Morgan Schick of the Bon Vivants created the drink menu for Cafe Du Nord and included the Martini Du Nord which was made with oyster shell-infused Noilly Prat vermouth and Ford's Gin. And of course there are oyster stout beers to be found, some brewed with oyster shells and others with the meat as well. 

Seafood fans can try or buy the Halfshell Gin locally, and globetrotting cocktailians should probably keep this one in mind for gifting a boozy taste of the Bay.

 

 

Camper Quoted About Ice (Again) in NY Mag

New York Magazine's shopping site, The Strategist, interviewed me for a piece on recommended ice cube trays and other accessories. 

The website is basically a site to mine Amazon referral fees, but they did a good job with the story. 

 

Nice Rats, But How Were the Drinks?

THIS WAS FUN: I was paid to go to a pop-up live rat bar and review it for Eater.com. 

I had fun with it, of course. In describing the drink, I wrote

On my visit the cocktail was pre-poured at least a few minutes earlier, with ice melting on top of the drink, adding a watery welcome layer to the sickly sweet entry-level cocktail dying in the cup below. The drink’s garnish is perhaps the most exciting component, featuring the root-end of a beet intended to mimic a decapitated rat’s tail (so, de-butt-itated?), which to be fair, is awesome.

Please give it a read. 

 

 

Moving on from the World's 50 Best Bars

Since 2011 I have been a polling coordinator- a person who chooses the judges- for the World's 50 Best Bars. I have just received notice that they'll be using a new polling coordinator in the US/Canada going forward, so I'll just be a voter myself (if they'll have me). 

I was first asked to help build out the voting panel globally by Lucy Britner, then an editor at Drinks International Magazine that was the creator and owner of the awards. I met Britner the previous year at a cocktail competition where she saw I had a large network of international bartenders. It was a good fit as they wanted to grow the list into what it eventually became.

Drinks International started the World's 50 Best Bars list two years earlier in 2009, and they had conducted their polling via telephone!  The 2010 World's Best Bars list supplement in PDF is here. At the time the top bars were Milk & Honey London, PDT, Harry's Bar Venice, Milk & Honey NYC, Buddha Bar Paris, Pegu Club, Death & Co, Employees Only, Harry's New York Bar Paris, and The Academy (formerly LAB). 

At first I was a global polling coordinator, reaching out to bartenders, brand ambassadors, cocktail journalists, and other cocktailian world travelers I knew in every country. To toot my own horn a bit, my selection of global contacts (in part, I was not the sole coordinator) helped grow the reputation of the W50BB list into the most respected list of its kind over the next few years. Not only was my reputation as an honest and thorough journalist good for the credibility of the list, the judges I chose brought the same qualities to the voting panel.

I still think that you can argue with the selection of bars that win, the voting procedures of one list versus another, and with ranking bars in lists like this in general, but it's impossible to deny that the voting panel is solid. (Actually it might be possible to deny it now - the list of voters used to be public but no longer is, in order to prevent any potential bribery. But I'm telling you as of 2018 the voters were the best of the industry.)

Later I was assigned the role as polling coordinator just of the US and Canada, which was still a ton of work to ensure we had voters from every region of the countries and not just 100 voters from New York. In my last year of the gig, I achieved just under 40% female voters (not perfect, but pretty good).  The European poling coordinator was and still is Hamish Smith of Drinks International, and we both worked incredibly hard on the back end to ensure the list was always fairly executed. We had many wonky conversations about things like "can you vote for a bar inside another bar, or is that considered the same bar?"

The World's 50 Best Bars was purchased by William Reed Media, owners of the World's 50 Best Restaurants list, in 2017. The restaurant list works a bit differently, with unpaid regional polling coordinators. It seemed clear with the new management that they wanted to work differently, bringing the bar list more inline with the restaurant one, and that my time as US/Canada polling coordinator would eventually come to an end. It did, and the 2019 list will be handled by a new polling coordinator. I will leave it to that person to announce their involvement, as I'm not sure how they intend to move forward with choosing voters but the contact page is here if you have questions. 

So for all my past voters, thank you for honesty and for meeting your voting deadlines, even if it took a few reminders for most of you :)

 

 

Pabu's New Street Fighter Cocktail Menu

Pabu, a Michael Mina restaurant in downtown San Francisco, has launched a fun menu based on the Street Fighter video game. Each of the drinks is dedicated to a character in the game, with the base spirit and other ingredients dedicated to the characters' backgrounds and home countries. 

More than just a novelty menu, lead bartender Raymundo (Mundo) Delgado and his team have included a lot of cool touches - I see rice syrup, clarified lime, wagyu fat-washed whiskey (they're also doing a wagyu washed drink at Michael Mina restaurant nearby), cantaloupe-infused mezcal, smoked vodka, and other fun stuff. The garnishes and presentations I saw on a recent visit were pretty elaborate too, including "fire pearls" and a drink served on a wooden sandal (though we could do without the activated charcoal). 

Check it out below. 

An All-Star Lineup (Including Me) at the Toronto Cocktail Conference in August

I'll be speaking about CocktailSafe topics at the Toronto Cocktail Conference this August. Tickets are on sale now and $150 includes admission to all of the sessions subject to room capacity. 

They are doing a few things differently at this conference from others. In the first place, they require speakers to hang around - no flying in, giving a talk, and flying out right after. Part of the reason for this is that they're also running a Mentorship Program where attendees can schedule time with the speakers for 15 minute one-on-ones. 

At TOCC, we have created a mentorship program that we are really excited about. The mentoring is included in all TOCC wristbands. Many of our incredible speakers have volunteered their time for this program. You will be given the opportunity to sit down for fifteen minutes one-on-one with these industry leaders to have a conversation and to ask them whatever it is that you are wanting to learn about.

Enrolment for the mentorship program will take place the day before they occur. You can sign up for a Tuesday mentoring session by coming into Registration on the Monday. You can sign up for a  Wednesday mentoring session by coming into Registration on the Tuesday. There, you will have the opportunity to sign up to speak with the Mentors at a set time. During that time, you can grab a cup of coffee with the Mentor and start up conversation. We are working with on a first-come first-serve basis and you must enrol in person at Registration to secure your spot.

And just look at the list of speakers! I'm excited to be among them. Hope to see you there. 

Get your tickets here.

Thoughts on Molecular Whiskey

I like innovation and technology. I like trying new things. I like progress and experimentation. But do I like Glyph "Molecular Whiskey"?

Well, I have thoughts. A few of which were used in this article, "Is Molecular Whiskey the Futuristic Booze We've Been Waiting For?" by Billy Lyons on Fortune.com. 

 

 

I judged (blind) Glyph at the SF World Spirits Competition. It was in the "Other Miscellaneous Spirits" category because it is not whiskey, and I remember thinking it tasted like vodka with spices, and since it appears to be made from grain neutral alcohol with added flavors that seems like a pretty accurate description. I thought it was interesting but would not have identified at as whiskey.

Another quote from me that didn't make it into the final piece: 

I don’t think Glyph is not going to impact the whiskey industry with its current flavor profile and price point. It’s more expensive than cheap whiskey so it’s not a low-price substitute for bourbon, and it doesn’t have a flavor profile that would make a whiskey drinker switch to it. Could it be a step on a path that converts a vodka drinker to a whiskey drinker? Possibly. But I think people will consider real whiskey to be a step up from products like this, like going from knock-off Gucci bag to a real one.

The writer also asked about Glyph as a "sustainable" alternative to regular whiskey. I think that we could call Glyph a lower-impact product since it's not aged in barrels requiring the wood and space to house them, but trees are a renewable resource so I wouldn't go so far to say it's very sustainable. 

But anyway as I indicate in the story, just because it's a whisky substitute doesn't mean I wouldn't drink it. I just wouldn't drink it thinking of it as a whiskey. 

 

 

Announcing the CocktailSafe Safety Poster

As you hopefully know, I, Camper English, am also the founder of CocktailSafe.org, a website about safer cocktail ingredients and techniques. 

The website was made possible by a grant from the Tales of the Cocktail Foundation, but in order to continue its upkeep and expansion I need to raise funds. 

On the Support page, you'll see you can donate to the project (even make a monthly recurring donation), hire me to give talks (note: they've been really well received so far!), or work with us to do menu/drink safety reviews.

But this week, thanks to suggestion by Dehron Hite-Benson (who also designed it in Photoshop from my janky Excel file) we are making available for sale a safety poster.

The poster contains information on the top 20+ safety concerns in the bar, including tobacco, liquid nitrogen, activated charcoal, and homemade tonic water.

It is written for United States audiences as it includes some mentions of ingredients that are illegal in the US but not elsewhere. (Thus we're only mailing it to US addresses for now; perhaps in the future we'll develop an international version.)

The poster measures 11 x 17 inches and is printed on 80-pound unlaminated paper; just the right size for the back office, storage room, or walk-in freezer door.

I hope you'll help support CocktailSafe by purchasing one - or several - for your bar. We can also do a custom print run/bulk mailing if you're a brand or larger company. 

The info and ordering page is here.