Distiller's Corner

A survey of recently turned 21 year olds in bars across America would reveal an alarming number of self-proclaimed whiskey drinkers who could not answer the simple question, “What is the difference between bourbon and whiskey?” Strangely, the exact same newly minted adults could probably tell you the exact difference between Bud Light and Bud Select, probably even Smirnoff Ice and Zima, but for some reason the finer points of whiskey distillery have eluded the younger generations of drinkers. To answer the question, simply ask yourself, “What is the difference between a square and a rectangle?”As you may or may not remember from middle school geometry class, all squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares. A square is a specific variety of the larger group of rectangles, requiring more stringent qualification barriers. While a rectangle needs only have 4 sides with 90 degree angles between them, a square goes a step further, specifying that each of those 4 sides must be the exact same length. In this analogy, whiskey is the rectangle and bourbon is the square, thus all bourbons are a type of whiskey, but not all whiskeys qualify as bourbon. Read More »

Whether you’re enjoying a neat martini at the local singles bar or you’re a 17^th century pirate clinging to a bottle of rum on the high seas, your life has been subtly enriched by a centuries old process known as distillation. While not exclusively pertaining to alcoholic spirits, distillation is a method used to separate mixtures based on their volatility (or tendency to vaporize) in a boiling liquid mixture. For the purpose of adult beverages, distillation is applied to fermented grain, fruit or vegetables in an effort to produce drinkable liquids with a greater alcohol content.The distillation basics have more or less gone unchanged since the 8^th century. One of the first distillation tactics put into use was “freeze distillation,” whereby a product is partially frozen, enabling the easy identification of higher alcohol concentrated areas, based on various degrees of freezing temperature, allowing for the removal or optimization of lower concentration zones. Freeze distillation was particularly common in Central Asia during the middle ages in what would be modern day Mongolia. More high tech improvements on the distillation process expounded as centuries passed. Fractional distillation came into practice during the 13^th century. In fractional distillation, a mixture is heated, as opposed to frozen, to its boiling point, allowing for the separation of chemical compounds at differing temperatures. Read More »