Updated Statement of Ethics

August 20, 2016 Eric Burke

As discussed last week, the time has come to figure out a solution to the fact that whiskey has gotten expensive enough that I can't keep going the way I have been. I received a lot of lovely notes both in the comments and via other means. The gist of most of them was that a big majority of you do not have an objection to reviewers accepting review samples if the trust is there and that I have sufficiently built up that trust already.

Other comments said they would be ok with ads, the issue for me is that ads are ugly and more importantly, they don't pay very well. I think I am already making more from my patrons than I would via ads. I love my patrons. I hope more of you will consider signing up!* The more of you there are, the more I often I will create the "bonus content" that they get.

To that end I've made a couple changes to the Statement of Ethics for the site. The changes are in bold-italic type below. I still plan to buy most of what I review, but will no longer feel that I shouldn't take samples if offered. I will still disclose that acceptance. Both because it is the right thing to do and because I don't want to get fined by the FTC. I love going on distillery tours and will pay for those that I go on. If however I see a good article coming out of it, I have no qualms setting up a private visit.

That's it. I still believe in transparency. I will still end up buying most of what I review, but since the policy has changed, I thought it would be a good idea to call out the changes.

This is document will be kept up to date. Things will be added to as things come up. Edits will be made if circumstances change.

I do not accept advertising.
I will not allow a comment that disparages women, men, minority groups, or homosexuals (or anyone else for that matter). I will not allow xenophobic or racist comments on the site.
I try to buy a lot of what I review, but will accept review samples.
If I do accept a review sample, I will disclose it at the beginning of the article.
When I visit a distillery or whiskey event, I pay for my ticket and take the same tours everyone else can. If this is ever not the case, such as a Media Event or a “Sneak Peak,” I will disclose that fact at the beginning of the article. This does not mean I won't set up a private tour/visit if the distillery agrees and it will make a good article.
There are spirits industry people who I consider friends. If I ever review one of their products, I will disclose that fact at the beginning of the article.
Beyond the sample policy above, I do not accept trips, gifts, or other compensation in return for posts or reviews.
Though I try very hard to get my facts straight, errors happen. If I make a factual error in an article, I will happily update it if notified and will make note of the change at the end of the article.
In return for the above, I ask that you respect the license that the reviews/posts/images were released under. I release all works on this site under a creative commons license unless otherwise noted. This means you are basically free to do whatever you want with them provided you do two things: use it for non-commercial purposes and give credit back to the site/leave on the watermark. Commercial uses are anything that make money such as a blog that accepts advertising or a presentation that people pay to attend, etc. If you want to use it for purposes outside the license, just send me an email and we'll work something out. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/

If you have any questions, click the contact icons in the main navigation to get a hold of me via email or your favorite social medium.

*At the time of this post I was running a campaign on Patreon.com, that campaign has since been disabled. BourbonGuy.com accepts no advertising. It is solely supported by the sale of the hand-made products I sell at the BourbonGuy Gifts Etsy store. If you'd like to support BourbonGuy.com, visit BourbonGuyGifts.com. Thanks!

Orange-Spiced Cocktail Cherries

August 18, 2016 Eric Burke

Last weekend I took a long weekend away to spend with my niece and nephew in Door County, WI. If you haven’t been there, it is the peninsula that juts out of the side of Wisconsin into Lake Michigan. One of the things that Door County residents are very proud of is their cherries. If you make a fruit product in Door County, you better have at least one expression that contains cherries. Cherry jam, jelly, wine, vodka, soap, cider, ice cream, candy, you name it. And while I’m not any sort of judge of cherries, I don’t even particularly like them. When you are there, and they are in season, it’s hard not to come home with at least a quart of them.

Luckily even though I don’t eat cherries, every time I get some, I decide to try to make my own cocktail cherries. Because even though I may not like cherries by themselves, they do play really nicely with bourbon and rye whiskey.

The last time I made some, it was chocolate bourbon cherries because those were the ingredients I had on hand that year. Thanks to my recent exploration of Michael Dietsch’s Whiskey cocktail book, I find I have a lot more items to play with this time. I really like Manhattans, so this year, I tried to really think about what flavors I wanted to include in my Manhattan so I would end up with the perfect garnish. I used cherry puree because some of my favorite bourbons have a ripe cherry note to them. I used dry curaçao because I prefer orange bitters to aromatic in my Manhattan. I used New Riff new make rye and Old Grand-dad 114 to give it a flavor that would play nice with the bourbon or rye. I used the spices from the Brandied Cherry Recipe in Jeffrey Morgenthaler’s The Bar Book because I thought they would play nice in my drink.

Orange-Spiced Cocktail Cherries

Pit one quart of fresh tart cherries (mine was about 1 2/3 pounds). You will need one pound for the recipe and the remainder for the cherry juice. (if you are looking for a cherry pitter, I recommend the OXO Cherry Pitter. It works great and isn’t expensive.)

Syrup Ingredients

1 cup cherry “juice" (Puree the remaining pitted tart cherries (about 2/3 pounds) in a blender, run it through a fine mesh screen, and add water to the result until it makes 1 cup)

1 cup sugar

Syrup Spices

1 tbsp cinnamon chunks (crushed cinnamon sticks)

1 tbsp Juniper berries

1 tbsp whole Allspice

1 whole Star Anise (broken up slightly)

Syrup Sprits

2.5 fluid ounce Dry Curaçao

1.5 fluid ounce New Riff new make rye

4 fluid ounce Bourbon

In a medium saucepan, combine the cherry juice, the sugar, and the spices and bring to a simmer (not a boil). If you want to avoid straining it later, tie the spices up in a piece of cheesecloth so you can fish them out). Once the mixture is at a simmer, let it simmer for 5 minutes to infuse the spices. Then add in your pound of pitted tart cherries. You’re just looking to warm up the cherries, not cook them, so stir them a few times and pull it from the heat.

At this point, the cherries should be well below boiling, but measure it to be sure. Once it is below 160 degrees (you don’t want that alcohol boiling off), add your spirits and stir.

You have a couple of choices at this point. If you make a lot of cocktails, you can just pack them in a mason jar and pop them into the fridge. If you think you might need it to last longer, you can put them into half-pint or pint jars and process them in a hot water bath canner for ten minutes to can it. This is what I did. I ended up with three half-pint jars to use later and about half a jar of the same size that I will use right away.

BourbonGuy.com accepts no advertising. It is solely supported by the sale of the hand-made products I sell at the BourbonGuy Gifts Etsy store. If you'd like to support BourbonGuy.com, visit BourbonGuyGifts.com. Thanks!

A blog, a squirrel, two walnuts and a fence.

August 16, 2016 Eric Burke

I have a lot of trees in my yard. Oak, Black Walnut and Maple mostly. The fact that most of these produce seeds also means that I have a lot of squirrels that travel through my yard. Few live there because of the fact that there have been dogs living here for the past decade, but they come for the food when the dogs are inside.

Tonight I happened to be looking outside at my yard. It was flooded from a severe rainstorm we’d had just an hour or so previous. As I was looking outside I noticed a squirrel navigating his way across the flooded yard. This particular squirrel had somehow managed to grab two walnuts in his mouth and was carrying them across the yard with the intent to take them into the neighbor’s yard.

As he reached the fence, he seems to have realized that he wouldn’t fit through it while carrying them the way he currently was. He tried to adjust them a few times, but quickly gave up, dropped one and hurried on with the remaining one. It didn’t look as if he even gave it another thought. Even though he was able to do something rather extraordinary in carrying both of them through a flooded yard, that didn’t stop him from making the necessary choice to leave one behind when it was clear that continuing on that way was untenable.

Which got me to thinking. I’ve done something here pretty extraordinary. I’ve been able to put up two posts a week for over three years. Almost all of them have a review of some sort in them. And since I seldom accept review samples, that means that I’ve bought things to review about 100 times per year. Last year, I was laid off and went into business for myself. And though business has been really good, the nature of being freelance has meant that I’ve had to cut the whiskey budget some.

And sadly maintaining a twice a week posting schedule is becoming untenable. At least from a purchasing standpoint. I’ve tried Patreon and I’m humbled that four people have been regular patrons. I’m humbled that the occasional check has come in from people that can’t commit to a recurring donation. But unless a few more people sign up, something has got to give.

I have a few options. I can remove the restriction on review samples. I can expand into other topics. I can start to take advertising. I can restart the online stores and hope someone buys something this time. I can reduce the frequency of posts. Or I can give up.

Blogs like mine are free to consume, but can be expensive to produce. I like the idea of the stores, and I’m thinking of items to create and ways to do it that will result in good products that aren’t sold at outrageous prices. But in the short term, I’m thinking that some combination of the first two will be the biggest help since reducing the posting frequency is a good way to kill readership. So what do you think? You are the audience. Please let me know in the comments. I’m like the squirrel right now. I’m at the fence, I’ve done something pretty cool, but I can’t continue the way I’ve been going. Which nut do I drop?

Johnnie Walker Select Casks - Rye Cask Finish

August 11, 2016 Eric Burke

As many of you know, I am on record as not preferring Scotch Whisky. It isn’t that I have anything against Scotland or it’s people. It’s just that I haven’t found one of their whiskies that I’ve been particularly drawn to. I’ve tried to say that “I haven’t found one that I prefer to bourbon,” as opposed to I don’t like Scotch. But as I tried more and more of them, I was starting to think that maybe I really just didn’t like Scotch Whisky.

At least until I was the “Resident Expert” at a local reader’s whiskey tasting. (If you can’t hear the sarcasm dripping off that quoted part, I assure you it’s there*). I was paid some money to tell a group of the hosts friends how I taste whiskey, how that is different from when I drink whiskey and to help answer any questions they might have on the topic of whiskey. On top of the cash, I also got to try any of the whiskey that was on the table of the guests. There were some nice ones there in both bourbon, scotch and rye, but one that I was particularly drawn to try was a blended Scotch finished in Rye barrels. And I liked it.

It sounded familiar, so when I got home, I searched though my samples and realized that I had a sample of the same whisky on my shelf that a friend of mine had given me. Because I had been out drinking whisky for money all night (and my wife had driven me there and picked me up—safety first!) I poured that sample for my wife. She liked it too.

Strange. I liked it even though I didn't think I cared for Scotch Whisky. She has actually gone on record saying that she doesn’t Scotch and yet she liked it. Hmmmm…

Johnnie Walker Select Casks - Rye Cask Finish

Purchase info: $25-ish at Marketplace Liquors, Menomonie, WI (I lost the receipt).

Details: 10 year old, age-stated, 46% ABV.

Nose: Toasted marshmallows, mint and hints of oak.

Mouth: Sweet with wintergreen, clove, slight caramel and a nice tingle on the tip of the tongue.

Finish: Warm and sweet with lingering wintergreen, clove and caramel.

Thoughts: I’d call this a whisky for Rye Whiskey drinkers that want their rye a little softer and more refined, but with less oak, than the typical aged American Straight Rye. It’s soft and gentle but with many of the flavors that one associates with rye. The typical mint has softened to wintergreen, but the clove and some caramel are still there. On the other hand, there is so much influence from the finishing barrels that I get none of the flavors that I typically associate with either blended or malt Scotch Whisky. Which to me is a good thing. But if you are a looking for that, this might be an issue.

So, I still can’t say if I can make a Grand Pronouncement about if I like Scotch Whiskey or not. But I have, at least, found one that I do like. And I like it quite a bit.

*Sarcasm not because I don’t appreciate being called an expert, but because I don’t feel like one. It feels like I still have way too much to learn.

Canadian Club 100% Rye: the U.S. Release Compared to the Canadian Release

August 9, 2016 Eric Burke

Canadian Club 100% Rye from the U.S. and from Canada

About a year and a half ago, I reviewed a bottle of whiskey that was only available in Canada. I thought it was a good, but not great whiskey and mentioned I probably wouldn’t make a trip to Canada (a six hour drive for me) specifically to pick up another bottle.

Almost exactly a year ago, I happened to cross the border into Canada while sightseeing in Northern Minnesota and decided to give that whiskey another shot. I bought a bottle at a Thunder Bay LCBO location. A bottle which sat in my closet until I had almost forgotten about it.

A couple of months ago Beam Suntory was kind enough to bring the whisky to the United States and I decided to run to Total Wine to pick up a bottle of the US release too. A bottle which spent two months in my closet until I made room for it on the Canadian Whisky Shelf.

Of course I’m talking about Canadian Club 100% Rye (or Chairman’s Select 100% Rye in Canada). I picked it up mostly because I was curious to see if there was any change to the product when it crossed the border and entered a new market.

To my palate, there was no change. When we did our tasting this weekend, I got the same notes from both bottles and both were pretty close to what I got the first time around. So if you loved this whisky in Canada, you should love it in the US. If you were like me and thought there were better options in both the rye and Canadian whisky categories…well…there still are.

I kinda like the Canadian version of the bottle shape a little better though. It takes up less room on the shelf.

This post is brought to you by readers like you who have pledged $1 or more per month to support bourbonguy.com. Not a patron yet? Consider going to patreon.com/arok to pledge your support and get bonus content. Thank you.

Jack Daniel's Gentleman Jack

August 2, 2016 Eric Burke

I’m on vacation this week and am giving you a little bit of whiskey content while I’m off galavanting around the Rocky Mountains. Tonight I should be arriving in Estes Park to spend the rest of the week so if I don't get to approving your comments right away, my apologies.

I’d like to bring up a little pet peeve of mine. Jack Daniel’s. Not the company, they are what they are. For marketing reason Jack Daniel’s chooses not to call their product bourbon. That’s fine by me. They could be the best selling bourbon in the world should they choose, but they don’t they leave that to Jim Beam.

No, the people who bother me are those who make a big deal out of whether it is a bourbon or not. On one side you have folks who claim that it is bourbon in all but name since Jack follows all the same rules as bourbon, they just run it through a big pile of charcoal before they put it into the barrel. The claim is that there is nothing in the rules for bourbon that prohibit this. The other side likes to say that the very act of running it through the charcoal is enough to flavor the whiskey. Some of these, at times, include the folks pouring you a sample of Jack Daniel’s at your local liquor store. They claim the maple charcoal adds sweetness or smoothness or whatever.

Personally, I tend to lean toward the could be bourbon side as, to quote a former Kentucky Master Distiller, “ I never saw a filter add anything to anything.” But honestly, whatever. It’s really none of my concern. It seems to be working out for them so who am I to judge.

Due to the aforementioned pre-filtering, Jack Daniel’s is known for it’s smoothness. The charcoal essentially jump-starts the aging process by getting rid of some of the chemicals that the barrel would end up removing. Regular Jack is pretty gentle. A little too gentle for me. So it was only because I had never reviewed it and because it was on sale that I even picked up the bottle of Gentleman Jack that I am reviewing tonight.

Gentleman Jack is crafted to be even gentler than regular Jack. It is still run through the charcoal filter before aging, but then it gets a second round through it after aging as well. What this does, is strip out a lot of the barrel flavors that they were patient enough to wait for the barrel to put into the whiskey. Most American whiskey is filtered after dumping. Some lightly, some very heavily. When used heavily, it’s often a way to try to remove some of the off-flavors from a whiskey that has become a bit over-aged. But what does it do to a whiskey, that presumably, was similar to the stuff they were putting into another bottle? Let’s find out.

Gentleman Jack

Purchase Info: G-Will Liquors, Andover, MN. Regular price: $21.99 for a 375mL bottle (on sale for $10.99).

Details: “Double Mellowed” 40% ABV

Nose: Grain forward with delicate spearmint, a light fruitiness and just the tiniest hints of oak.

Mouth: Thin and a tad peppery. Fake banana flavor, grain, mint and just a touch of oak.

Finish: Short with banana bread, mint and a rougher burn than I would have expected from something labeled “Double Mellowed.”

Thoughts: While I will admit to not being a fan of regular Jack Daniel’s, there have been a few of their higher-end products that I have really liked. This is not one of them. In fact, I don’t like this at all. I just can’t get past the fake “banana candy” flavor (though for the record, I don’t like banana candy either).

Getting Geeky With Union Horse Distilling Company, Part Two: The Reviews

July 28, 2016 Eric Burke

As I state in my Statement of Ethics, I seldom accept review samples. And that if I do, I will disclose it at the beginning of the article. Please consider it disclosed. I would like to thank FleishmanHillard for putting me into contact with the distillery and providing the bottles being discussed and reviewed this week.

Union Horse Reserve Bourbon and Union Horse Reunion Rye

On Tuesday I posted Part One of this post where the Patrick Garcia, Master Distiller of Union Horse Distilling Company and Damian Garcia, Director of Sales and Marketing for Union Horse Distilling Company were kind enough to get geeky with us by answering questions drawn from both myself and Patreon submissions.

Looking back on their answers, I really like how they are doing things so in tonight's post, let's see how much I like the whiskey.

Union Horse Reunion Straight Rye Whiskey

Purchase Info: This bottle was not purchased and was instead provided by FleishmanHillard, the PR firm representing Union Horse for review purposes.

Details: 100% Rye Mash (using enzymes to break down the starch instead of malt). 46.5% ABV. Two year age stated. Batch 1. Bottle 1177.

Nose: Toffee, mint, baked bread, and grain

Mouth: Bold and flavorful. Spicy, showing both cinnamon and clove as well as cayenne. Mint extract and grain flavors are present as well, though not as much as I'd expect from the nose.

Finish: Medium length with a nice spice. Lingering grain and mint flavors.

Thoughts: This is one where it had to grow on me. In my initial tasting, I felt it tasted a bit young. After spending almost a month with it, I've warmed up to it. This certainly is a unique whiskey and is outside the normal American Straight Rye flavor profile, which threw me at first. But I've come around. I've tried it neat, with some ice and in cocktails and have enjoyed it in all three. It still tastes a bit young, but not terribly so. I like this. It's a unique product that actually tastes pretty good too.

Union Horse Reserve Straight Bourbon

Purchase Info: This bottle was not purchased and was instead provided by FleishmanHillard, the PR firm representing Union Horse for review purposes.

Details: Corn and Rye Mash (using enzymes to break down the starch instead of malt). 46% ABV. Two year age stated. Batch 2. Bottle 1068.

Nose: Caramel and mint along with faint notes of bubble gum, soil and barrel char.

Mouth: Vanilla and butterscotch, along with cinnamon, cloves, campfire smoke and sweet malt.

Finish: Medium length with lingering mint, smoke and malty flavors.

Thoughts: I am not a fan of smoky whiskey. I can appreciate it, but seldom like it if it is too pronounced. In this case, the smoke flavors are just light enough that it doesn't bother me too much. My wife on the other hand likes this a lot and has been the primary consumer of the bottle above.

Getting Geeky with Union Horse Distilling Company, Part One: the Interview

July 26, 2016 Eric Burke

So yes, I broke my “No Review Samples” rule. I seldom do this, but when Union Horse Distillery agreed to get a bit geeky with us and answer some questions, I felt that the exchange was worth it. The following questions are a combination of reader questions and my own. They were answered by Patrick Garcia, Master Distiller for Union Horse Distillery and Damian Garcia, Director of Sales and Marketing for Union Horse. Enjoy!

Eric: Let’s start at the beginning of the process with the water. Your press release mentions that “Union Horse is rooted in an appreciation for the unified spirit it takes to run a homegrown business and the force which runs through its products.” It then specifically mentions water along with grain and barrels. A lot of distilleries in Kentucky make claims about the quality of the water they are drawing from, even though in many cases it is just the city water. So what’s going on with your water? Was that poetic license or is there something special about the Kansas City aquifer? If not, is there a specific adjustment that you take to help the fermentation process?

Patrick: We use regular city water which is carbon filtered. All of our mashes are sour mashes which helps with adjusting the pH for fermentation.

Eric: Along those same lines let’s talk about grain. Where do you source your grain from?

Damian: We mill locally sourced grains of the finest quality we can get from the Midwest, in particular from Kansas and Missouri farmers. And, we donate the spent grain to local Kansas dairy farmer. We like keeping it local as we believe it strengthens our local economy, and highlights the amazing products we have in the region.

Eric: Continuing with grain and moving into the cooking and fermentation process, the mash bills on your website state that your rye whiskey is 100% rye and that your bourbon is made with “a sour mash recipe consisting of corn and rye.” So my question is: are you using commercial enzymes in place of malted barley, as they do in Canada, or are you malting one of the other ingredients such as the rye or corn? In either case, can you touch on why that decision was made instead of using the traditional malted barley?

Patrick: Yes, we are using commercial enzymes in place of malted barley. We chose to use enzymes because we can control a mash a lot easier without the need for additional grain like malted barley. Enzymes enable us to more accurately control the liquefaction, and saccharification stages. Viscosity is also another issue easily controlled with enzymes especially with a Rye Mash.

Damian: This also makes our whiskies very different in flavor than most traditional whiskies, with the corn and rye grains being richer within the foundation. The floral notes that the malted barley brings maybe absent, but the sweet, bold and spicy notes are very prevalent.

Eric: Let’s stay with fermentation and move into the other necessary ingredient to making fermentation happen: yeast. I’ve talked with a range of distillers. Some (like many of the large whiskey makers) who take great pride in their yeast and some who admittedly just use whatever they happened to have purchased last time. Where does Union Horse land on that spectrum? Over the years you’ve been doing this, have your thoughts about what yeast to use changed at all?

Patrick: When we first started we tried multiple yeast strains from wine to champagne, beer to whiskey. There are a lot of choices out there and we narrowed it down to a couple of strains that we liked the best and tasted the best. We have a certain yeast strains, and certain combinations of them, we use for each of our products but that information is proprietary.

Eric: I’d like to skip distillation for a moment and move on to the other ingredient you mentioned in your press release: barrels. A lot of readers like to know about barrels so there are going to be a few of them here. First of all your press release mentions your “signature barrels.” So what make these barrels special? What size barrels do you use? What char level are they?

Patrick: The 53-gallon signature oak barrels come from Missouri forests and are made from primarily White Oak. Union Horse Distilling Co. requires that they are produced from 24 month, air dried, outdoors seasoned, aged wood at a char level of #3, with lightly charred heads and branded with the UHDCo. logo.

Eric: One reader who I shared a sample with, asked if you used toasted barrel heads as the flavors reminded him of toasting?

Patrick: With them being lightly charred, the whiskey will bring flavors of a low-medium toast.

Eric: Skipping to aging process. Do you age in a climate controlled environment or do you just let nature take it’s course?

Patrick: Our barrels are stored in our non-climate controlled warehouse that gets extremely cold in the winter and unbearably hot in the summer. The drastic climate shifts we experience in Kansas City (Midwest) is perfect for the maturation of our whiskey. The barrels expand and contract throughout the years adding continuous depth and complexity with each cycle.

Eric: Now onto the whiskey in the bottle. I was sent a bottle of Batch 1 of the Rye and Batch 2 of the bourbon. How big are your batches and how long do you let them marry before bottling?

Patrick: One batch could be anywhere from 1000-2000 bottles. We will blend different lots of barrels to create a batch and then yes we let it marry or rest for a period of time before filtration and bottling.

Eric: I’ve talked with other craft distillers who, for marketing reasons, have decided to not use the word “Straight” on their label. Union Horse uses it prominently on the label. Whiskey lovers everywhere applaud that, but what was your reasoning for including it?

Damian: We started distilling and aging our whiskies back in the spring of 2011. Our plan at that time was always to move into a “Straight” whiskey when the whiskey was ready and that time has now come. We feel these whiskies not only highlight the maturation of the spirit, but the maturation of our distillery.

Eric: I get this reader question a lot when I review craft whiskies. Mostly because, unfortunately, some bad actors have poisoned this well and trust levels are low among a section of whiskey geeks. So to stave off the inevitable, I like to ask this. Union Horse doesn’t add any flavorings or additives to their straight bourbon or straight rye whiskey, correct?

Patrick: No, no flavorings or additives are added. The #3 char caramelizes the natural sugars in the wood giving the whiskey a sweet caramel, smoky spice and vanilla flavor during the aging process.

Eric: The press release mentions that there is whiskey up to five years old and the label states the whiskey is two years old. So I’m assuming that these contain whiskies of varying ages (as most non-single-barrel whiskies do). Yours being from 2-5 years old. What’s the distribution of the whiskies in question? Is it mostly 2-3 year old whiskies with some 4 and 5 year olds thrown in to give it some depth? Or does is trend older than that?

Patrick: The ratio really depends on the taste of each lot ranging up to 5 years. We’ll test (taste) each barrel individually, then blend, proofed down to spec and test again to see what flavors are being brought to every single batch.

Eric: As a follow on question, are you holding back some of those older stocks to release on their own some day?

Patrick: Our first barrels that were laid down are being used in these whiskies, but we also have others that we’re saving for future use; we’re really anxious to taste those in the next few years to see what they will continue to do.

Eric: I have another reader question regarding style. What style of whiskey are you aiming for? For example, some places want more oak, some want to be cocktail friendly, etc.

Damian: The aim is for our whiskies to be as well rounded as possible so that they can be enjoyed, neat, on the rocks or in a cocktail.

Eric: What have you guys at Union Horse learned since the beginning? Have your processes changed between the older stocks you are using in these batches and the younger ones? Fermentation times, barrel entry proof, barrel size, etc.

Patrick: There’s always growth in anything you apply yourself too and yes we’ve evolved and continue to do so, but we’ve pretty much tried to keep the processes the same from day one. Before we started our distillery we did a ton of research and worked behind the scenes on this craft which has enabled us to keep things pretty consistent.

Eric: And finally, where can we buy these whiskies? Is this a regional release or are there plans for going nation-wide with it?

Damian: These spirits are distributed in Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, in and soon to be in Oklahoma, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Anyone not in those states can visit unionhorse.com/where-to-buy to see where our spirits can be purchased online.

Eric: I would like to thank Patrick and Damian for getting geeky with us and answering questions from both your fellow readers and myself. And once again thank FleishmanHillard for putting us into contact. Looking for the reviews? Due to the length of the article, I've broken it into two parts. The next part, coming Thursday, will be the whiskey reviews.