Log Date
A whiskey adventure for you and me.
Writing on the coaster
“It’s all about the type of still. Most cheap whiskeys— and vodka and gin—are produced on a column still. But good bourbon is made in a pot still, which allows us to cut out, with greater precision, the distillates that make people sick.” —Daniel Prieto Preston, C.E.O., Cacao Prieto, Brooklyn
(Source: GQ)
Writing on the coaster
This question keeps rolling in, as the bars keeps rolling out drinks with a “white dog” base.
Listen, it’s moonshine.
It’s baby whiskey fresh from the still, unaged. The barrels used for aging give bourbon its signature notes and flavors and, ultimately, its rich, distinctive hue. Bereft of that, you’ve got yourself a clear liquid flavored solely by the corn.
So no, this whiskey is not bootlegged from Uncle Bill somewhere in the yonder of the Adirondacks. It’s more than likely from your craft microdistillery — they’ve got something to put out on the shelves to stay afloat while the rest of the batch idles in barrels in the back.
Locally-minded bartenders plucked them on up, and began experimenting. Consumers took note, clamored for more. The trend is certainly reaching a swell, as major distilleries are now churning them out. Thus, moonshine is seeing a resurrection on bar menus nationwide.
Old-fashioned Hyperlink
While the more affable bourbon drinkers tipped their way all the way to “most generous” (at a 22.6% average) and into the hearts of their bartenders forevermore.
Writing on the coaster
“In Hollywood, hired by director Howard Hawks to write Road to Glory, Faulkner showed up to a script meeting carrying a brown paper bag. He pulled out a bottle of whiskey, but accidentally sliced his finger unscrewing the cap. If the film’s producer thought the meeting was over, he was wrong. Faulkner dragged over the wastepaper basket — so he could gulp whiskey and drip blood as they hashed out the story.”
(Source: NPR)
Old-fashioned Hyperlink
“Jarosz’s team offers an intriguing glimpse at how an alcoholic buzz prompts intuitive insights into problems that require searching pre-existing knowledge, says psychologist Mark Beeman of Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. Further studies with intoxicated volunteers should employ complex problems that require information gathering and recognition of novel patterns, key features of many real-life problems, Beeman suggests.
Intoxication may aid verbal creativity partly by lowering the ability to control one’s thoughts, comments psychologist J. Scott Saults of the University of Missouri in Columbia. He and his colleagues have found that alcohol reduces recall of sequences of sounds and images but leaves working memory unaffected.
Saults’ team has also reported that intoxicated individuals become less afraid to make mistakes, another possible creativity booster.”
Writing on the coaster
“When you shake a drink, you’re aerating it, and you’re chilling and diluting it. That’s essential to something like a daiquiri because something with citrus should be really sprightly and almost effervescent on the tongue. When you’re talking about something like a martini, a Manhattan or a Negroni, there’s no citrus, there’s no eggs. It’s spirit on spirit. It’s going to be more of a sipper, something that’s consumed a little slower and it should be velvety smooth and heavy. You don’t want air bubbles in something like this. So the rule is: if you can see through it, you stir it. If you can’t see through it, you shake it.”
(Source: lamag.com)
Writing on the coaster
“Aging has even gone beyond stationary warehouses. For its Ocean-Aged Bourbon, Jefferson’s Reserve placed several barrels on a 126-foot ship and let the casks cruise at sea for nearly four years. The increased oceanic air pressure (compared with its warehouse), along with the Panama Canal’s extreme heat pushed the whiskey deeper inside the wood, causing the wood sugars to caramelize and add a rumlike black hue. The whiskey breathed a little easier, too, says Trey Zoeller, who co-founded Jefferson’s Reserve. ‘The porous nature of the barrel not only allows for evaporation of bourbon out of the barrel, but also [for] the barrel to breathe in the salt air, giving it a briny taste,’ Zoeller notes.”
When you put your whiskey to sea, maybe it’s time to admit we’ve gone a league or so too far.
(Source: scientificamerican.com)
Writing on the coaster
“As the whiskey ages, it evaporates volume through the wood—10 percent the first year and 4 to 5 percent each subsequent year, an attrition known as the angels’ share. On a twenty-three-year-old barrel, the angels’ share is about fifty gallons out of the original fifty-three, which partly explains Van Winkle 23’s heart-stopping expense. ‘When it comes to our bourbon, the angels are very greedy,’ Van Winkle observes.”
(Source: gardenandgun.com)
Old-fashioned Hyperlink
•the grain that goes into the bourbon
•the composition and purity of the water
•the fermentation process
•the distillation process
•the length and conditions of the maturation and aging process
•and the bottling
