Kentucky Straight Bourbon

This is Freddie. His family has worked at Buffalo Trace distillery for three generations. His grandfather handled every one millionth barrel of whiskey that came through the distillery, dying two weeks after rolling through barrel number six million, just shy of his 91st birthday. Freddie’s catchphrase is, “Ain’t that sumpthin’?”

To wit: “Buffalo Trace is one of only four distilleries to operate during Prohibition. There was a catch: you had to have a doctor’s prescription, and you only got one bottle per person a month. So naturally, there were a lot of sick children those days! If you got in good with your doctor, you could even order you favorite brand. By the end of Prohibition, doctor’s had written over 6 million prescriptions for whiskey. Ain’t that sumpthin’?”

We stopped at Buffalo Trace Distillery on the way down to the Beaumont Inn in Kentucky, one of our regular getaway spots. I could give you the nitty-gritty details about the effects of limestone aquifers or warehousing on the various whiskies in their portfolio, but the real pleasure of the tour was Freddie. This guy clearly loves what he does, and has nearly three generations worth of family stories to entertain his audience with.

In addition to a bottle of Eagle Rare bourbon and Buffalo Trace liqueur (available only at the distillery), I purchased some White Dog. White Dog is slang for the clear spirit that comes off the still before it’s put into wood. It is, as you would imagine, nuclear hot in your throat, but if your taste buds aren’t scorched after the first sip, you’ll notice a sweet caramel corn hit transforming into white bread. No idea what to do with it, but it gives an idea of what the distilleries spirit is like underneath the wood.

The Beaumont Inn itself is a former girls school turned old southern hotel. To give you an idea of the place, Rosemary Clooney was a frequent guest, but the owners say they’d never let her boy stay there (don’t appreciate his politics). A few years ago, it acquired the only liquor license in an otherwise dry county, making it prime real estate for locals, ensuring the place continues to bring in revenue even when the wife and I aren’t there to wolf down their delicious fried chicken and corn cakes.

Along with a new pre-Prohibition cocktail list, they’ve expanded their whiskey offerings since our last visit. The jewel of the collection is the 12 and 15 year old Pappy Van Winkle, a wheated bourbon. The door Freddie is opening in the picture above leads to the bottom floors of the rickhouses, where the whiskey matures the slowest—that's where Pappy sleeps. It’s released once a year, and gets snapped up quickly, so I appreciated the chance to enjoy a glass (or two). It is absolutely the smoothest, most complex bourbon I’ve ever tasted, and can hold its head high alongside any Scotch.

On the way back out of town, we visited Woodford Reserve. I’ve always enjoyed Woodford (it has a finish like Maraschino cherries), and I was intrigued by their use of Scottish style pot stills. Being smaller, you get to see a lot more of the process, like these pics of wort fermenting in washbacks and the inside of the mash cooker. The three stills themselves are beautiful, made in Scotland, of course. The whole place is very neat, tidy and beautiful, tucked away in a nook amongst horse farms. A bit too neat, in fact. The distillery is owned by Brown-Forman, makers of Jack Daniels, and the presentation comes across a little too slick. In contrast, Buffalo Trace is a working distillery, a little dirty and rough around the edges.

It doesn’t help that our tour guide admitted that a proportion of Woodford is blended with spirit from their monster plant in Louisville, since the less efficient pot stills can’t keep up with demand. What’s the point of pot still whiskey if you’re going to dilute it with cheap filler? She also alleged that Scotch can be made with artificial flavors and colors, whilst Woodford is not. Scotch producers can add some flavorless caramel for a more consistent color (which has a negligible effect on flavor). So, basically, she’s full of crap. No need to talk smack about the competition if you have a superior product.

 Both distilleries offer a more comprehensive “hard hat” tour that you have to schedule ahead of time, offering a more comprehensive look at the distilling process. I think the four hour drive back down to Buffalo Trace, running the gauntlet through the chaos of Cincinnati, would be well worth it, especially if Freddie is our host. Ain’t that sumpthin’?

Drake Brothers Mead

After touring the Middle West Spirits distillery a few months ago, co-owner Brady encouraged us to visit the Drake Brothers Meadery just down the street. It's the type of synergistic offering of goodwill to fellow businesses that makes me love the Short North community. That said, the suggestion was largely forgotten until I saw a recipe for mead in my homebrew book. Then, in the way that a mere speck of thought at the back of your mind heightens your awarness, I spotted a bottle of Brothers Drake mead on the shelf of specialty wines at Whole Foods.

Mead is essentially beer, with honey replacing the grain in fermentation. It has an appearance and mouthfeel like wine, with a similar alcohol content, and is often served chilled. The Bros have various flavors available in stores depending on the season and availability, but whenever I try something for the first time, I opt for the simplest rendition. So while tempted by the VO, infused with South African Rooibos tea, I opted for the traditional Honey Oak.

Mead, informs the Brothers Drake web site, was the drink of the gods. To grind a personal axe, and without passing judgement on the assuredly nice fellas at Bros Drake, I hate when something purports to be the drink/food/official car rental company/etc of the gods. Apart from the wine guzzling Dionysus, I've yet to see an official product endorsement by any polytheist deity, though it's rumored  Zeus was a fan of moonshine.

That little rant aside, I understand what they're getting at. Mead is ancient, and pops up regularly in Egyptian and Norse mythology. I seem to recall Beowulf drinking a bucket full of the stuff before he lopped off Grendel's beastly head. Drinks with history are inherently more interesting, and mead certainly provides that. But ultimately, the flavor has to match up to the pedigree.

I'd never had mead, but I really wanted to like this. Locally sourced ingredients? Check. Humble homebrewing beginning? Check. Handcrafted with TLC? Check.

But alas, this mead was not for me. Not bad, but weird. Their website notes mead's complexity, and it's true that every sip I took provided something different. It had a pleasant custardy feel and a not overbearing kiss of oak, but there was also a weird sweet, spicy fattiness like salami and a very assertive thyme note that only gets stronger  the more you drink. It's certainly an interesting alternative to white wine, but then I'm not a huge fan of that either.

I would like to try one of the Bros' other offerings; melomels (with added fruit), metheglins (with spice/herbs) or cysers (with apple cider/juice). Unfortunately, at $23 a bottle, it's a bit pricey to experiment with--not that I'm ever against parting cash for quality. Perhaps I'll have to pop by the meadery on 5th Avenue and try a glass of the intriguing sounding Apple Pie, or the hopped version of their original. There are also a handful of bars around town that have the mead on tap, usually for the price of a glass of wine (http://brothersdrake.com/wordpress/get-mead-3/).

Despite feeling slightly disappointed, I'm glad I tried Bros mead. Much like whisky, I'm sure there's a flavor out there that suits everyone, and if I have to try every flavor to find it, by the Gods, that's a sacrifice I'm ready to make. 

Project Homebrew

No, I didn't forget about you. How could I forget about you?

Perhaps you noticed (or more likely, not), I haven't posted anything for a while. Far from losing my passion for all things boozy, I've been taking some classes at Capital U this summer to further my alcoholic edification. The last eight weeks have been a bit like science boot camp. Their motto: "Eat. Sleep. Science". I don't recall sleeping much, but the rest seems about right.

My education hasn't been all theoretical, though. The day before classes began, I made my first batch of homebrew. I'm a big fan of  Dogfish Head Brewery, so when I saw a book by their master brewer, Sam Calagione, I snapped it up. Most homebrew books feature a simple (frankly, dull) brown ale as their first recipe. But this is Dogfish, and the name of the book is "Extreme Homebrewing", so the first recipe is the  boozy 9% abv A-Z Brown Ale, pumped up with molasses, brown sugar, maple syrup and Belgian candi sugar for those little yeast to munch on.

I bought my homebrew kit from Gentiles in Grandview, but was less than impressed with the service*, so I bought the actual ingredients for my brew at the Winemaker's Shop on High St in Clintonville. I was feeling a bit intimidated, but the hippie looking dude working the counter couldn't have been more helpful. I flipped open the recipe book and he boxed everything up for me in a few minutes. Nifty.

Brew day was somewhat less nifty. I had everything sanitized, and all the ingredients laid out in order on the counter, when I began to fill the brew pot with water. I had assumed the biggest pot in the house would be big enough for the five gallon boil. Turns out the pot was exactly five gallons, and a pot full to the brim doesn't stay full very long once it starts boiling. Adding to the indignity, I had already activated my yeast pack, and was starting classes the next day, so there was no chance to brew some other time.

After a brief pause to scream obscenities at no one in particular, I ran out to Gentiles and purchased a pot big enough to stew all of the yippy little dogs in our neighborhood at once.  Seriously, I can bathe in the thing. Once I finally got the water boiling, things went more smoothly. The book lists the times to add hops and sugars during the hour long boil, so if you can read a recipe, you can brew a beer. The nervy part starts when the heat is turned off.

At high temps, bacteria and wild yeast (causes gamey/sour flavors) can't survive, dimethyl sulfide (tastes like creamed corn) and dissolved oxygen (causes cardboard flavor) boil off  . Between 140 and 80, these undesirable microscopic critters thrive. The idea is to cool the wort off quickly in an ice bath, ideally within a half hour, and get the good critters (my American ale yeast) in the wort as soon as possible. Forty minutes later, my thermometer is stubbornly sticking above 90, and I'm out of ice. Luckily, I had sanitized the crap out of every possible surface in the kitchen, and I found some cold packs, so my beer doesn't taste like sour creamed corn on cardboard toast.

When I came downstairs the next morning, the airlock on the fermenter was bubbling away in the bathtub, meaning the yeast were doing their job turning sugar into alcohol. There is something very satisfying in the gurgle of that airlock, knowing beer is magically being created in your presence. Plus, it makes your guest bathroom smell like sourdough bread.

Two weeks later I was ready to bottle. I had, through much hard work and dedication, managed to empty two cases of beer bottles. The bottling process is also fret with biological terror, as the beer is very susceptible to bacterial infections. Siphoning the beer from the fermenter to the bottling bucket minimizes splashing and adding oxygen to the beer for the critters to feed on. This takes a bit of practice, as evidenced by the sticky, beery mess I left all over the kitchen floor.

Another thing to put in the, "Things to Remember For Next Time" file is the fact that the bottling bucket has to be above the level of the bottle to work (duh). Unfortunately, the kitchen cabinets protrude just enough to sit the bottling bucket slightly dangerously close to the edge of the counter, leaving five gallons of beer wobbling perilously above my head. Crap. Halfway through, just as I was getting a hang of using the bottling wand, I realized I had forgotten to add the priming sugar that gives beer carbonation. Double crap. I carefully emptied the case of beer I had bottled back into the bottling bucket, added the sugar and started again.

So how did it turn out? After two weeks, I was concerned. The beer had a nice roasty carmelized flavor, and the final gravity reading confirmed the yeast had done their job in acheiving a 9% abv. But the beer was flat and syrupy--kind of like drinking vanilla extract. Worried I had done something wrong, I did some research,and found out that high gravity beers take longer to carbonate, and that some Belgian brewers don't touch their Tripels for six months. I've been trying one every Friday since, and this last week I finally got something resembling a head. Still needs a few more weeks though.

The thing about brewing is, once you do one, you immediately start thinking about what's next. That's why tomorrow, inspired by 21st Amendment's awesome watermelon wheat beer, I'm brewing a kiwi wheat beer, a little wiser from my mistakes and certain to make a boatload more. So if in five weeks I've made a great beer, I'm sure you'll hear all about it. And if not, it's on to the next brew.

*Subsequent trips to Gentiles have been considerably better. It also sells take and bake pizza in addition to wine and beer making supplies, and I think I was dealing with a bunch of the "pizza dudes" instead of the "beer dudes" on my first trip.