The disappointment and redemption of Fleischmann's Straight Rye

It’s mid-March 2013 and I’m about to embark on one of the most disappointing, and yet ultimately most interesting, hunts of my life: the hunt for Fleischmann’s Straight Rye. 

I discovered that Fleischmann’s Straight Rye existed, coincidentally, by finding out that it had been replaced. As Sazerac is wont to do, a statement that hinted at an age had been removed and replaced with a bit of nonsense in the same typeface. Straight Rye Whiskey had turned to Mash Rye Whiskey. 

A label change would not normally be enough to send me searching for a whiskey. But in the article, Chuck mentioned that it was the only rye made at the Barton distillery and that it is distributed only in Northern Wisconsin. Well, that’s home. And for the next few months every time I went back home, I checked the liquor stores to see if I could find it. And in October 2013, I finally did. 

Now, Fleischmann’s, whatever the spirit, is a bottom-shelf product. There is a vodka, gin, rum, brandy and blended whiskey to go along with that rye. But it’s an old name and was born from the same company that birthed the yeast that most baker’s are familiar with. That company was born in 1868. And along with being the first to introduce yeast sold in it’s modern form, they also were distillers. Wikipedia claims that they were America’s first commercial producer of gin but it’s Wikipedia, so take that with a grain of salt.

All that is to say that I really shouldn’t have expected a lot of this product. But, yet, I kind of did. I’d read good reviews of it. The forums at StraightBourbon.com had entire threads dedicated to singing its praises. It couldn’t be terrible, could it?

It couldn’t. It was not terrible. It was close to terrible, but not terrible. It was bad enough that I didn’t want to infuse it or cook with it for fear the flavor would come through. It made the only manhattan that I’ve ever dumped out. But it was better than say, Rebel Yell. So it sat on my shelf. For months. I tried giving it away as a curiosity sample, but felt bad doing it and more often than not cautioned the recipient to not drink it. What could I do? There is no way I can throw away a whiskey, yet it was taking up valuable space on the shelf. 

And so it sat. My excitement in a successful hunt turned to disappointment. At least until I traveled to Virginia and visited the A. Smith Bowman distillery (another Sazerac location). As a souvenir, my wife bought a bag of barrel char that she could stick in a container and smell every once in a while. They said if you dumped a tablespoon of whiskey in there every so often, it would retain the smell it came with. Now there was a use for that Fleischmann’s, but 1.75 liters would take a long time to disappear a tablespoon at a time. But it inspired me to try something. Aging bourbon in a second barrel is big right now. It could be another bourbon, a cognac, sherry or even rum barrel. I didn’t have a barrel, but I did have barrel char. And I had a lot of whiskey that I didn’t know what to do with. Hmmm…

I devised an experiment. I set up four mason jars and put a quarter cup of barrel char into each one. I then took added a cup of Fleischmann’s Rye, tightened the lid and put it into a closet, shaking it every day. I strained the first through a series of coffee filters after a week. The next was strained at two weeks, the third at a month and the final at 2 months. I also poured a four ounce sample to use as a control. The results were as follows:

Fleischmann’s Straight Rye Whiskey

Purchasing info: ~$12 for a 1.75L, Northern Lakes Cabin Stop, Hayward, WI (October 2013)

Nose: Silage/grain with hints of mint and cherry

Mouth: Thin, lightly sweet, hints of mint that feel medicinal.

Finish: Gentle with a faint charcoal aftertaste

Thoughts: This was an inexpensive curiosity. I can’t imagine using this for everyday drinking/mixing/cooking. Now that it seems to have been replaced by Mash Rye Whiskey, I doubt anyone other than the Straight Bourbon forum inhabitants will miss it.

Barrel Char Finishing Experiment 

Nose

  • Even after a week’s infusion, this doesn’t nose like the same whiskey. It’s sweeter, showing much more caramel. 
  • Not much difference between week one and two.
  • By one month, the silage from the control sample is gone and the cherries are back, but now they are chocolate covered. 
  • At two months, the cherries are not only chocolate covered, but dark chocolate covered and joined by rich caramel and char.

Mouth

  • A week made a lot of difference in the mouthfeel. It’s thicker and much sweeter. The bourbon influence is clear.
  • At two weeks, the silage flavors are gone. There is more cherry presence with hints of chocolate. Think of the liquid that runs out of the Christmas candy. It’s kinda cherry and kinda chocolate, but not quite either.
  • One month: Dark, rich and thick in the mouth. Cherry notes very pronounced with black pepper spice.
  • At two months this is like drinking a candy bar: toffee, coconut, nougat, chocolate. And of course that ever present cherry.

Finish

  • Week one: getting better
  • Week two: no real change
  • One month: The finish still has hints of the original medicinal mintiness but there is much more warmth and it lasts a lot longer
  • Two months: lingering spice and sweetness in the finish. After a bit the mint returns.

Thoughts

After a week or so, you start to notice that there is something interesting going on. It’s not there yet, but you know there is something. At about one month, it’s actually gotten to something I would drink on it’s own. the dichotomy between the thick, rich, spicy sweet mouth and the minty finish is very interesting. At two months, the flavors are even more complex, but they are starting to become muddied. If I were forced to chose one of these to bring to market, I’d go with the one month. 

I thought that this purchase was a bust. If this experiment hadn’t yielded something drinkable, I would have dumped it out and not thought about it again. But it turned out to be one of the most interesting redemption stories I’d ever witnessed. In fact, it was good enough that I poured the control and the one and two week infusions together and am reinfusing it. I’m starting at three weeks, but may let it go for another if it isn’t ready yet. I’m now actually quite excited about my bourbon-char finished rye whiskey.

A Review of Four Roses Limited Edition Small Batch 2013 Release

It’s no secret that I love Four Roses. And this, my friends, is getting to be a problem. Everyone loves Four Roses now. They love it so much that you can barely buy one of their limited releases anymore. This year, my normal source for the Limited Small Batch release pulled it off the shelves and into a lottery. A lottery that had a suspicious number of couples winning for the number of people at the drawing. Not coincidentally, a lottery in a store that is no longer one of my top visits when looking for good bourbon.

Other than that, I never saw it in Minnesota. In fact, never saw it on a shelf. Period. Popularity is a bitch for those of us who’ve loved it all along. But I’m not one of those hipsters who loved something until it got cool and then moved along. Because Four Roses really is that good. And luckily I have friends. Friends who are willing to pick me up a bottle where they live and get it to me. Friends that I now owe a drink to the next time we are in the same state. 

Once I got my bottle of Four Roses Limited Small Batch 125th Anniversary Edition, I rationed it. I rationed it for the last few months. And now it’s finally down to one more pour. So. What did I think of it?

Four Roses Limited Edition Small Batch 2013 Release

Purchasing Info: $99, unnamed Las Vegas store.

Particulars: 51.6% ABV, Recipe: OBSV 18 year + OBSK 13 year + OESK 13 year

Nose: Black Tea with honey. Cedar. After a bit it gives up some baking spices and a hint of citrus.

Mouth: Thick, spicy and sweet with clove, maple and hints of pear.

Finish: Warm and sweet leaving a bright tingly sensation on the tongue and cheeks.

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Thoughts: First off, I really, really like this bourbon. I’ve heard people describe it as the best bourbon they’ve ever had, but that’s probably pushing it a bit. I’ll go ahead and say that, for me, it’s not even the best Four Roses I’ve had. I would rank both the 2012 Limited Small Batch and the the 2009 Mariage higher (which were basically equally good in my book). 2013 was a bit too thick and sweet and the flavors a bit more muddied when compared to the 2012. But that’s splitting hairs. I can see why this was chosen to be the American Whiskey of the Year last year, it’s an amazing whiskey. It’s just not the best ever.

I am already looking forward to 2014’s version. I hear that the barrels that went into making both it and the 2012 have been exhausted so I’m excited to see if they try something new and venture away from the OBSV/OBSK/OESK formula they’ve used the past couple years. I’m really kinda hoping for something with the OESF. Or maybe something with a Q yeast. Something that’ll throw people for a loop. But we’ll see.

Blog about a blogger who's blogging whiskey: Josh Wright

“You went on the wrong weekend, my man!” 

This was the beginning of my first in-person meeting with Josh Wright of SipologyBlog.com. I was extremely excited for my first visit to the Kentucky Bourbon Festival and had tweeted out my order for my first drink of the week. After a little coversation we ironed out that it was ok that I was there the weekend before BourbonFest because I was there the whole week. Also, as it turned out, that I would probably be happening across his path since he was coming for the following weeekend. This was exciting for me. I’d been following Josh on twitter for a while and reading his blog for a while longer. 

You see, shortly after I took my love of bourbon online, I started looking for other blogs on the topic to read. I wanted reviews, tasting notes, and insight into what was going on in the world of whiskey. I started by looking at who other whiskey fans were reading. One blog that seemed to be on everyone’s list was SipologyBlog. I read it and liked it. The thing I liked best about the reviews was the fact that he tended to focus on american whiskey, beer and wine, things that I was also interested in. Things that I could get. And afford.  

As I followed him on twitter, I found out that he was more than just a palate and nose. He was a smart guy with interests remarkably similar to mine. When I first had the idea for a series of posts highlighting those people I enjoy reading and interacting with online, he was the first guy I thought of. So without further ado: Josh Wright.

Hey Josh, thanks for agreeing to be the guinea pig for this series. First things first: who are you, anyway?

You're welcome. It's an honor!

That's kind of a philosophical question.  I'm Josh Wright, born, raised and educated in Central Indiana, most of that time on the north side of Indianapolis. I mean the actual north side of Indianapolis, not a suburb. I graduated from Broad Ripple High School in 1994 and Anderson University in 1998. Both sides of my family have deep Indiana roots. I've lived in the Detroit Metro area since 2001. That was also the year I married my lovely wife Liz.

My current occupation is stay-at-home dad to my 3 year old daughter. I also blog about booze, of course and I enjoy screwing around on the internet in general. I consider myself a Christian and a democratic socialist, although I may not be a great example of either. I'm a craft beer lover, cocktail lover, wine lover and whiskey lover. I'm a writer although I've never been paid for it. I'm a rheumatoid arthritis sufferer. I have ancestors who came over on the Mayflower, some who were early settlers at Jamestown and one who was Daniel Boone's uncle. That's all of the answers I can think of right now.

The first time I thought "this is a guy I need to pay attention to" it was for a joke that combined a professional football player and an ancient Christian heresy. So it seems you and I have a lot in common: from a love of history and, at least a passing interest in, professional football to a love of bourbon. If we have this much in common, what else are you into outside of bourbon? I feel like I should be checking into things you like.

That's very kind. I love history, especially the history of Christianity and the history of pre-modern Europe. I love those two topics so much I have master's degrees in them. I got my Master of Theological Studies degree in 2001 (it was a big year for me) and an MA in History in 2013, concentrating in Medieval and Early Modern (Reformation through French Revolution) Europe. I wrote my final essay on Julian of Norwich. I still do a lot of reading in those areas and hopefully I will get back to writing in those areas too. I'm currently reading a book called The Orrible Synne by E.J. Burford. It's a history of prostitution in London from the Roman period to the time of Oliver Cromwell. It's a bit dated but a fun little book.

I enjoy the usual team sports, especially NFL football, MLB and B1G basketball. Despite living in Michigan for almost 13 years, I still don't understand or enjoy hockey. I blame my formative years in basketball-obsessed Indiana.

Music is my other big love. I sing in my church choir. I love classical music, early music, blues, reggae, rock 'n' roll of any era, hip hop, R & B, Irish folk, classic country and jazz. That's not to say I like everything in those categories, but I like some artists and songs from all those genres. I've been on a classic hip hop kick lately. I've long been a rabid Gang Starr fan and I also love Public Enemy, De La Soul, Rakim, A Tribe Called Quest, The Roots and MC Lyte to name just a few. I'm also a big fan of the Afghan Whigs, Wussy, and PJ Harvey.

My other interests are homey type stuff. I love cooking and I do it almost every night. I especially love BBQ, southern style cooking and traditional Mexican cooking. I'm kind of a locovore too. I buy fruits and vegetables in season at our local farmer's market as much as possible. I love gardening especially native wildflowers, herbs, tomatoes and chilies.  We also have red currant bushes and strawberry plants in the backyard.

I love art and archaeology and comedy and TV and old movies too but this response is way too long already..

I know you are a bourbon fan, you're active on forums, blog about it, etc. How'd you get into it?

I've always had a curious mind and when I first started drinking alcoholic beverages after I graduated college I was interested in knowing where my booze came from and exploring the topic in general. My parents are teetotalers so I knew next to nothing about it. I started by reading labels and trying some of the popular brands. The internet was a much smaller place back then and there wasn't a whole lot of information on American whiskey around. One of the first things I noticed was that I liked Jim Beam better than Jack Daniels. From then on bourbon was my first choice.

I stuck with Jim Beam for a long while until I picked up a book entitled The Book of Classic American Whiskeys by Mark H. Waymack and James E. Harris (1995). It is part tasting guide and part travel guide. Not all the distilleries were open for tours back then and it was written at a time when Seagram's still existed and the only Four Roses product available in the US was the yellow label and it was only sold in Kentucky. There's a great story about Al Young of Four Roses taking them off into the snake-filled Kentucky woods to the site of the original Old Joe Distillery. It really captured my imagination. 

I used the book as a jumping off point to explore the bourbon landscape literally and figuratively. My wife and I planned our first Kentucky vacation in June of 2007. We managed to visit all the distilleries that were open for visits on that first trip, and also worked in visits to other tourist attractions in Kentucky. We went again the next year and I think we've been once every year since then. I also started doing tastings for our friends around that time. I don't do those very much anymore but I enjoy them a lot.

Right before our first trip to Kentucky, I joined StraightBourbon.com. It's been a lot of fun connecting with other bourbon enthusiasts and I've made a lot of friends there. For my money, it's still the best place on the internet for information and informed discussion about American Whiskey. It's a very well-run forum.

You write about whiskey and other spirits, wine and beer at SipologyBlog.com. What's the history of SipologyBlog?

Sipology Blog started back in the spring of 2010. I came up with the name on my own. Sip-ology, meaning the ology of things people sip. I later discovered that a now defunct coffee house in California also used the name, so I have emphasized that it is Sipology Blog on social media. From what I've read the coffee shop self-destructed in a rather ugly fashion so I doubt they'll send lawyers after me for the name any time soon.

I got the idea for the blog shortly before my daughter was born. I had been writing a long, rambling series of wine posts on my old Live Journal blog and I had also been posting tasting notes on  StraightBourbon.com for a while. I had grown sick of LJ and people seemed to enjoy my tasting notes so I decided to start up a simpler, more focused blog in which I would review whatever I was drinking. That happened to be mostly Michigan beer, wine and bourbon.

There were a lot fewer booze blogs back then. I had read Sku's, Chuck Cowdery's, and a few others and while I liked them, I didn't feel like I needed to do what they were doing. I tried to do news early on, but it was too time consuming and too easy to screw up. I do commentary now and again, but the part of blogging that appeals most to me as a reader and a writer is tasting notes, so I've stuck with that for the most part.

A secondary purpose to Sipology Blog was the to keep up my writing chops. I had to take some time off from grad school when my daughter was born and I've never been very good at keeping a journal so I though a simple blog would be an easy way to keep writing so I could jump right back into academic work when I needed to.

Judging alcoholic beverages for what they are one of the things that I try to do with my reviews and that's why I always factor in price. A $20 bottle of bourbon should not be evaluated the same way as a $60 bottle. Some people claim that they don't factor in price when they write up tasting notes but I don't think that's possible. Tasting is like history in that respect. Total objectivity is not possible, so the best way to overcome bias is to acknowledge that it exists and move on from there. Not acknowledging that bias means that the taster (or historian) is a hostage to it. 

As a guy who follows this stuff, what's your take on the state of the bourbon industry right now? What would you like to see happen?

The overarching problem right now for all the big distillers is keeping up with demand. The distillers that have been hardest hit have been smaller macros: Buffalo Trace, Barton, Wild Turkey and Maker's Mark. What we've seen from them is price hikes, proof reductions (or attempted proof reductions anyway), the dropping of age statements and rolling shortages. Four Roses and Dickel may also be facing problems sometime soon, but all their regular products are NAS so that gives them more flexibility. I don't see an end to any of this anytime soon. The only hope of relief is if demand starts leveling off but to my knowledge there's no sign of that happening.

In spite of this, there are lots of reasons to be optimistic. Wild Turkey has a new, bigger distillery with new warehouses and on-site bottling now. Buffalo Trace is adding warehouse space and I don't think the quality of their products has discernibly diminished in the past few years (others may not share that opinion, though).  A new line of 1792 bourbons from Barton, including a wheater and a high rye, will probably be hitting shelves in the next year. Wild Turkey and Jim Beam have been releasing a lot of new, experimental-type products. Those haven't always been successful but it's still a good sign. Heaven Hill has also been maintaining age statements for most of their products and even adding one to Bernheim Wheat Whiskey.

The micro-distilling scene is also a mixed bag, but the wheat is starting to be separated from the chaff. The stocks of the micros are getting older and getting more consistent. Some of them even taste good now. The prices are still ridiculous for most. $50 or $60 for an 86 proof NAS rye? No thanks, brother.

Hypothetical question: A new bourbon magazine comes calling and offers you a column. Would you be interested and what beat would you choose to cover?

I would love to do something like that. I'd love writing tasting notes, of course but I think I'd also enjoy writing about bourbon fandom or historical topics relating to bourbon. I think there's a lot of material that still could be covered better in both those areas.

Plug time: where can people find you online and is there anything else you'd like to plug?

My blog is SipologyBlog.com My blog also has a Twitter account, @sipologyblog (home to all sorts of stuff not just booze stuff), and a Facebook page. My Spotify playlists are also open to the public, so anyone with similarly weird tastes in music can follow me there. My defunct blog on Christian Mysticism is anagnosis.wordpress.com My LJ journal is still out there but it sucks so I'm not telling you what it's called.

Everything on my blogroll is good, and probably better than my blog. If you like knitting and Detroit, visit my dear friend Amy's blog, bonneamieknits.wordpress.com. If you like cheese, Lutheran pastors or both, check out my college friend Katherine's cheese blog called Cheese Learnin': cheeselearnin.blogspot.com If you like theology, philosophy and heavy metal, check out my brother-in-law Lee's blog thinkingreed.wordpress.com. I would also plug your blog, but whoever is reading this is already reading it anyway.

If you like excellent, contemporary art by a living artist who is an amazing person, visit cherylpaswater.com and buy as much art from Cheryl as your budget will allow. If you like web comics, go to thebrothersgrant.com and read the brilliant and funny comic by my brilliant and funny friends Chris and Ginger. Everyone should also subscribe to the Bourbon Country Reader and buy Chuck Cowdery's book, Bourbon, Straight.  

I've never been interviewed like this before. I feel quite honored! Thanks!

Josh, thanks again for agreeing to this. Hopefully it was as much fun for you as it was for me.

An interview with Lee Egbert, Formulator for Dashfire Bitters

It was sometime this past winter, possibly December. I’d heard from multiple people that South Lyndale Liquors was a store that I needed to check out. (By the way, it is.) While I was there I saw a man mixing drinks for people. I found this a bit odd in the middle of a liquor store so, as is my way, I wandered over to find out what was going on. 

It turns out that the man wasn’t making very big drinks. It was a liquor store, after all. What he was doing was giving tastes of his product, Dashfire Bitters, in the best way one can. In a drink. I was impressed enough to buy the Old Fashioned Bitters and an Applewood Smoked Sea Salt solution. That second one I bought because I had never seen a salt solution for sale before, it was cheap, and I figured I would be able to figure out what to do with it. I never did, in case you were curious. 

After talking to the guy for a little bit, I asked for his card. Shook his hand and wandered off. It wasn’t until last week while I was once again trying to figure out just what I was supposed to do with the salt solution that I remembered that card. “Why not ask?” I thought to myself. 

I also figured that while I was at it, I would find out more about Minnesota’s own Dashfire Bitters. Lee Egbert, Formulator for Dashfire Bitters and a principle in the soon-to-open 11 Wells Distillery in St. Paul, MN was generous enough to answer a few questions for us.

Let's start very general: What the Dashfire Bitters story? Why bitters?

I’ve always been a big spice and flavor guy, but it’s really during my travels to New York that I really started to understand this new focus on cocktails. Thanks to prohibition we really lost the art of cocktails, but the Japanese picked up where we left off and man did they take it and run with it.  One of my favorite Speakeasies in New York is Angles Share, a Japanese speakeasy, and ever since I studied Japanese in Junior High I’ve always appreciated the effort the Japanese put into perfecting things - whether its sushi, robots, animation or cocktails. The Japanese really know how to obsess about a given subject, which is something I understand and appreciate. I too had been obsessing about craft cocktails, sparing no expense, making hard to find ingredients such as shrubs, gum syrups, tonics and of course bitters. Anyone who likes these old cocktails finds themselves reading books like Jerry Thomas Bartenders Guide and soon realizes these ingredients can be hard to find. Even the ones you can find can seem chemically produced. For that reason I thought I’d try making my own products but using different base spirits. I’m certainly not the first to try this, there are lots of bartenders making their own in this way, but I found it odd that pretty much all products on the shelf were made with neutral grain spirits. Out of my first four test formulas, three bombed horribly, but one was a home run. That is now the exact formula for Dashfire Bourbon Barrel-Aged Vintage Orange No. 1. Since Orange is such a classic I was a little scared some wouldn’t like it but man did I have such a great response. With my first release I wanted to show my skill to earn some respect but my next release had a whole separate intention. With Mr. Lee’s Ancient Chinese Secret I wanted to introduce something that revealed my creativity and knowledge of unique ingredients. Between my time in China and love of travel this was an obvious choice for me. The rest as they say is history. 

I've interviewed a few distillers now and I know you have a foot in that world as well. Can you talk about some of the differences between making cocktail ingredients and making spirits? Other than the obvious lack of distilling.

You know to me they are one in same. That’s not true for all distillers though. I think many are purely focused on the base spirit, but I do feel it is very important to understand how that base spirit will be applied in cocktails. I know as long as I’ve wanted to make bitters I’ve also wanted to produce spirits and really for the same reason. My dream has always been to make all the ingredients for a Manhattan. I’ve now have the bitters and I did make some crazy tasty brandied cranberries from last year’s cranberry harvest, so I guess now I just need to make the rye and vermouth. The rye is definitely in the works and I have a trip to France and Italy planned this fall to continue my education on vermouths. 

From a production side it is very similar to the process of making a gin. I macerate my spices and ingredients in high proof alcohol for some time in a barrel and some times in glass depending on the flavor I’m after. Then instead of distilling I filter to keep all the flavors. Sometime I add sugar which is traditional in bitters but in the case of Vintage Orange I use natural ingredients such as fruits and flowers to add that slight bit of sweetness. That process is a bit unorthodox in bitters but for certain flavors I prefer the result.  

You make a few different products, bitters, tinctures, cocktail salt solutions, etc. If someone were going to buy just one, where would you recommend they start?

They would definitely need to start with a bitter and I would suggest the Vintage Orange. There are literally hundreds of cocktails that call for it, last time I checked the Kindred Cocktails Database there were 350 or so. It’s also used in the primary classics like Old Fashioneds, Manhattans and Martinis which makes it a great place to start. 

I've purchased both your Old Fashioned Bitters and your Applewood Smoked Sea Salt. I understand how to use the bitters, but tell me what I should be doing with the salt solution?

Bartenders have been using salt for quite some time to balance cocktails. Similar to how you add a dash of salt to your cookies, salt balances flavors but also accentuates them. A specific application is to add a couple drops to the top of an Old Fashioned. Lately I’ve been making mine with Applejack, Maple Syrup, Old Fashioned bitters and the Applewood Salt. I’ve also noticed it seems to make a drink more complex and also easier to imbibe which could be a dangerous thing. So many cocktails are overly sweet and not really balanced and salt can help with that. Not every cocktail has to cover all the flavors, sour, sweet, savory, bitter, umami, but it’s good to have balance. 

I'm local, I can find your products in quite a few of the liquor stores I frequent. But where can folks outside of the metro buy your products? Are they available in other states? Online?

Yes, I am in a handful of other states, but they are online through a couple retailers such as France 44, South Lyndale, Ace and Surdyks.

Anything new on the horizon that we should watch out for?

I do have a couple new formulas I’m excited to release for Dashfire before the holidays, but right now I’m laser focused on spirits for 11 Wells. If we are lucky enough to get the cocktail room law passed we’ll need to start making a wide variety of spirits which I can’t wait to create. You will see some usual suspects but also some completely new stuff too. 

Any advice for the home bitters maker?

I separate all my ingredients first and then blend them together after they’ve macerated. This saves you the disappointment of over flavoring something with one or more of the ingredients, especially the bittering agent. Also don’t bother filtering and just let it settle and siphon of the top. This saves the hassle of clogging up coffee filters. 

I’d like to thank Lee for answering my questions. Check out Dashfire at dashfirebitters.com or on Facebook at: facebook.com/DashfireBitters. The Old Fashioned Bitters (now called the Brandy Old Fashioned Bitters) are quite good and I recommend them.

Bourbon Review: Jefferson's Presidential Select, 18 year old

Roughly a year ago, I was walking through one of my usual liquor stores. I was on a beer run. And, as I always do, instead of walking straight back toward the beer coolers I turned left and went to look at the bourbon. 

There is a tiny little shelf near the ceiling that holds four or five of the more expensive North American whiskies they have on hand. And I look up there every time I visit. I have to, it’s where I found (and passed on) various van Winkles back in 2011. It’s where I found out about the yumminess that was the 2009 Four Roses Mariage (still my favorite of the ones I’ve had). 

On this particular visit, I hadn’t planned to buy a hundred dollar bourbon. I hadn’t really even planned to look. I was stopping in for a six-pack of beer. My wife was with me. More at issue, my mother-in-law was with me. Randomly dropping a hundred bucks on something to put in my closet would get a raised eyebrow and a shrug from my wife, but it would get shock, confusion, questions about my sanity and wonder that her daughter ever let me out of the house unsupervised from my mother-in-law.

So, of course I looked. And up there, was one bottle of a bourbon that I knew was no longer being distributed. The writers were cautioning that if you saw it, and wanted it, to grab it because that was it. There would be no more. 

Well, crap. It was one I hadn’t tried yet and one I’d been meaning to. There was nothing for it. I had better grab it. And so I came into possession of a bottle of Jefferson’s Presidential Select 18 year old (Batch 14, bottle 1811). My wife, predictably raised her eyebrow and shrugged. As a lifelong drinker of Old Style beer, my mother-in-law was shocked that anyone would pay that much for any booze. And kept on being shocked for a while. 

So was it worth it? Sure, my mother-in-law is a funny lady and I’d pay a decent amount to set her off sometimes. But what about the bourbon?

Jefferson’s Presidential Select, 18 year old

Purchase Info: $99, Blue Max, Burnsville, MN (May 2013)

Nose: Sweet baked apples with brown sugar. Earthy, like freshly dug soil. 

Mouth: Nice syrupy mouthfeel. Warm on the first sip. Baking spices and sweetness at first, but transitions to a dry tannic woodiness.

Finish: Swallows gentle but develops a heat in your chest that lasts for minutes. Drys the mouth.

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Thoughts: I find this to be too woody. To me, it was aged too long. It’s too dry. I described it in a tweet shortly after opening it that it was like drinking woody honey. My opinion hasn’t changed. That said, my wife really likes it. Which doesn’t surprise me in the least. I’m not normally a fan of extra-aged whiskey. The bourbons I like best tend to be in the 10 year range. Whereas her favorite bourbon was 18 years old before it was discontinued in favor of 20, 21 and 22 year old varieties. So if you also like bourbon with a bit of wood on it, give this a shot if you happen across one of the few remaining bottles. I’m glad I did even if, for me, it was just meh.

A One-Month Manhattan

My father tried to get me something I really like for Christmas this year. He went out and bought me a big bottle of his favorite brandy. He was off a bit, but as we are both from Wisconsin, a bottle of Korbel brandy is not a bad guess if you can’t remember exactly which brown spirit is in someone’s glass and I appreciated the gesture. But no matter how much I appreciated the gesture, the sad fact of the matter was that I had 1.75 liters of a spirit that I didn’t really care for on hand and no idea what to do with it.

Fast forward to about a month or so ago. I had an idea: I wanted a Manhattan. This is not an unusual idea for me. If I’m not drinking my whiskey neat, this is the other way I drink it most often. The unusual part was that I wanted to try it with home made ingredients. I wanted to try making my own vermouth and my own bitters to see if it was worth the effort. I’ve been itching to try making my own bitters for a few years now and the vermouth? Well, the recipes I saw online called for brandy. So if this worked out, I’d have a use for that big bottle as well.

I found a recipe for a DIY vermouth on Serious Eats. It sounded easy enough to do, and it was. The only change I made was to add a bit of lemon zest to the mix because I thought it would pair nicely with the wine I was using and it did. The one thing that wine didn’t do though? Pair nicely with bourbon. Even with a high heat, low sweet bourbon, it made a Manhattan that was flabby and not tasty enough to be worth the effort. Unlike almost every other fortified wine I’ve tried though, I’d drink this one on it’s own. So there’s that. But as a use to get rid of that giant bottle? I’d be better off waiting for dad to visit.

I had a thought as I was making the vermouth. Sherry (one of the ingredients of the vermouth recipe I tried) is also a fortified wine. What if I put all the herbs, fruit peels and bittering agents into some sherry and let it sit in the fridge for a month or so? The answer, you get a very bitter, spicy sherry with hints of orange. But what if you then used a warm infusing technique to infuse more orange peel into more sherry and add that to the mix along with a little brandy? Well you get something very close to store bought. If you have a bunch of sherry on hand and don’t know what else to do with it, try this. The issue: it is so much like the store bought, that it seems a waste of sherry. You could make some fantastic sherry potatoes or even a sherry cake with that stuff. I mean Noilly Prat vermouth is only like six bucks here in Minnesota.

A little over a year ago, I bought a book on bitters by Brad Thomas Parsons, titled appropriately enough: Bitters. It’s a fantastic book, but I held off on making any of them because I wasn’t sure what I’d use them for. I have a bunch of bitters in my cabinet and I basically use the Angostura and the Angostura Orange. But this was a great excuse...err…opportunity to finally try one. Because I enjoy my manhattans with orange bitters, I chose to make the orange. The only change I made was in my choice of base spirit. The recipe called for high proof vodka. I knew this was going in manhattans, so I went with Old Granddad 114. Good call, it makes a fantastic bitters. The manhattan made with the Brad Thomas Parsons recipe was consistently chosen over the manhattan made using the Angostura Orange in a head to head match-up we had here at the house. And it didn’t matter what vermouth we used. It’s a little spicier and added a bit more definition to the drink. This recipe is a win. 

So two of these worked out, one didn’t. One was worth the time and effort, two were not. What’s the take away? Have fun trying things. If I’d have tweaked an ingredient here or there in the vermouths, they may have been fantastic. If I’d have used a different sherry or a wine that paired with bourbon better, it could have made all the difference. We don’t experiment because what’s out there is bad, we experiment because it is fun and the fun is it’s own reward. And heck, sometimes, like in the case of the orange bitters, you get the fun of making and something that is better than what you already had. There’s the dream. 

It may have taken almost a month to make these manhattans, but I now have a pint of orange bitters to use in manhattans for the next year, a spiced and fortified wine to drink over the next month or so and a way to use up excess sherry. That’s not so bad.

New Retailer: Ace Spirits in Hopkins, MN

A couple of weeks ago, a twitter follower brought Ace Spirits to my attention, wondering if I had heard about the store. I hadn't, so I looked online to see what it might be. Right on the front page:  “every whiskey available in the state.” Color me intrigued.

Since that time, I’ve been to Ace a couple of times. It’s not hard to find, but if you don’t know what you’re looking for, you might drive past it, never noticing it’s there. On my first visit, I wondered if I was in the correct spot or if my phone had led me astray. I was in the parking lot of a small strip mall and there was no sign that said “Ace Spirits be here.” There was a large sign above one of the doors that simply said: “BEER & WHISKEY, “ which was enough for me to decide that even if I wasn’t in the correct place, it was the place I really wanted to be anyway. As I walked up to the store, I wondered if it was open. Unlike most of the liquor stores in the area, there was a definite lack of light spilling out. But above the slightly mirrored door, there was a small sign that said something about cold beer. And it was lit, so I wandered in. 

I was immediately welcomed upon entering. Which was a nice change from many of the stores I visit. It was dark, but comfortably so. It’s a small area, but not crowded. The shelves were dark wood and two walls were covered floor to ceiling with whiskey bottles. If you put my computer desk and a small tv in there, it would be exactly how I imagine my man-cave to be. 

To learn more, I reached out to Louis Dachis, proprietor of Ace Spirits. He was gracious enough to answer a few questions.

So what's the Ace Spirits story?

Ace Spirits has been an idea percolating for a few years. I had been getting very interested in beer and whiskey of all types and I found what were once wine trips were turning into brewery and distillery tours. I had been operating three Merwin Liquors stores in the cities and the amount of space dedicated to beer and whiskey was expanding as I got more and more into it and the customers responded to the increasing selection. My gal, Sara and I visited the Whiskey Shop in Brooklyn and we really loved the idea of a small and focused space. Craft beer was already exploding and we were watching dedicated whiskey bars open in the cities and menus at existing places expand to include more whiskey and better beer. 

The idea was to create an experience surrounding the purchase. A place to talk about these things we love in a comfortable space. The entire setup was to be very intentional from layout, stocking, fixtures and lighting. It would have been easy to buy Lazier shelving and slap some paper signs over the windows, but that's not what we were going after. We've blocked all sunlight from the outside with walls and window film to prevent skunking. All lights in the store, with the exception of the three above the register are narrow-band LED's and we keep the temps in the store on the chilly side to aid with the freshness goal. The build out still isn't done and we will probably always consider it a work in progress.

Your website claims to carry every whiskey available in Minnesota. And since I saw things that I haven't found elsewhere, I believe you. But why? And why do you think the competitors aren't?

Why not? It's our focus. We love the stuff. And it's funny, you can have just as long and passionate discussion with someone about the merits of Old Overholt as you can about Balvenie 40. There's a lot to be said for that. We all like different stuff and it's very true that certain items lend themselves best to certain experiences. I really enjoy it all and love to hear from the people that produce it as well as those that love to drink it. Others don't do it because there are a lot that don't sell. It's that simple. But it's sort of like being open 24 hours- you don't stay open because you do a ton of business between the hours of 3 and 4am, you do it because everyone knows that no matter when they swing by, you will be there. This is a similar concept. If you love whiskey, you know we will have it.

After visiting the website, it's not hard to see that you are doing things a little differently than most stores. Many local whiskey fans have been involved in drawings to win a chance to purchase rare spirits. Your contest is just to win the whiskeys. Free. 

I like the word "Free". It gets people's attention. Especially when it comes to these items. I wanted to let people know who we are and what we were all about. It's not much more complex than that.

Not that I'm complaining since you are basically on my way home from work, but why Hopkins? Why not Minneapolis or St. Paul?

I would love to have opened in Minneapolis, but state law prevents me from having more than one license in any given municipality. I grew up in Hopkins and love the Western Suburbs. Four Firkins covers the edge of the city, but there wasn't anything out this way. Being as close as it is to Highway 7, 494, and the new thoroughfare that Shady Oak is to become for EP, I thought this was a great spot. The bones of the space were good and because this is to be a destination, the location wasn't quite as critical. There was a store a block away that closed recently which allowed us to move in. This store did OK, and I'm hoping the neighborhood welcomes us and affords us similar success in addition to those that may come to visit from further away. So far, the response has been very encouraging.

I’d like to thank Louis again for taking the time to answer some questions. You can learn more about The Great Whiskey Giveaway at AceSpirits.com or engage with them on Twitter (@acespirits) or Facebook.com/AceSpirits. This place is not your typical Minnesota liquor store. That’s a very good thing. I have a feeling I’ll be here more often than my wife would like.

Book Review: Twin Cities Prohibition—Minnesota’s Blind Pigs & Bootleggers

Before it closed, I visited the exhibit: American Spirits, the rise and fall of Prohibition at the Minnesota History Center in St. Paul, Minnesota. I found it to be a very nice exhibit. Informative, entertaining. I saw a lot of cool artifacts and even learned a thing or two. If it comes to your area, I highly recommend it. 

After exiting the exhibit, I decided to visit the book store to see if I might find a book on the subject to pick up. I surely did. There was, of course, Last Call by Daniel Okrent. A book that while informative, had me giggling at the lengths people went to get a drink. I’d read it before and loved it. Right next to it was another promising sounding book. The title? Twin Cities Prohibition: Minnesota’s Blind Pigs & Bootleggers by Elizabeth Johanneck. This sounded perfect. A local slant on what I’d read about in other books. It was twenty dollars and short, but since I’m guessing the purchase goes to help the History Center I figured, what the heck? 

I should have kept looking. 

This title is very misleading. This is a collection of rambling, second or third-hand stories that relate the dirtier side of Minnesota in the first half of the Twentieth Century. In and of itself, this would be fine as you could see how that could be organized under a Prohibition theme. Before. During. Legacy. This is not how it is organized. Or if it is, there are no sign posts along the way. 

The subtitle claims stories about Minnesota’s Blind Pigs and Bootleggers, but spends more time on the crooked politicians and businessmen. The “Masters of the Universe” as the author calls them. The only mention of the illicit liquor dispensaries were chatty blog post-like descriptions of her visits to the modern-day businesses that happen to be in the same buildings. 

In it’s short 160 page length, I learned that the man who built the Foshay Tower was crooked, but that it now houses the swank W Minneapolis Hotel. I learned that the governor during prohibition was dirty, but also considered one of the greatest governors the state has known. That there were a bunch of robberies and murders in the first half of the Twentieth Century. And I learned that the author has an almost religious hatred of the Federal Reserve. I learned very little about Prohibition in the Twin Cities, the speakeasies or the bootleggers. 

I did learn to read the reviews before impulse buying a book though. I started out really wanting to like this. I mean, Prohibition is one of my favorite American History topics. But now? Now I just want my lunch breaks back for the week I spent reading this.