There is a beer made in this country that you cannot buy in any store, tavern or brew pub, even though millions of gallons are produced each year. It is thicker than the darkest stout, more like watery oatmeal than beer. It doesn't just have body, it has texture. As for the flavor, it's not too great. No hops or other flavorings are used, only grain, yeast and water. In other words, it's bland, though the nose is very yeasty. This beer does pack a wallop. At about 13%, it has twice the alcohol of the most aggressive malt liquor, yet it isn't even served at fraternity parties.
No taste? High alcohol? What is it, a new ice beer? No, it's "distiller's beer," and while you may never have heard of it, you've undoubtedly heard about the drink it becomes: bourbon whiskey.
Actually, good beer and good bourbon start out almost the same. For both you need good grain, good yeast and good water. Skip the hops and the two processes are almost identical, except the whiskey-maker goes further by distilling the beer into a clear, concentrated spirit.
The connection between beer and whiskey should not surprise you. The Celts who made the world's first whiskey had been brewing ale for centuries by the time distillation arrived on their isles. (Let's get the spelling issue out of the way right now. The Irish and most Americans spell it "ey." The Scots, Canadians and Japanese drop the "e.")
As is true of beer, whiskey can be made from any type of grain. Some whiskies, like some beers, use 100% malted barley. Single malt scotch is the best example. As is also true of beer, if you drink strictly all-malt beverages you will miss some of the fun. In the USA, no all-malt whiskey is produced. Here distillers use just enough malt to get that enzyme action going, and stoke the cooker with other grains. Brewers call those other grains "adjuncts" but you won't hear that term used around a distillery. That's because in a typical American whiskey plant (Canadian too), "adjunct" grains (primarily corn) will make up 90% of the mash! Malted barley is seldom more than 15%.
Our distinctive national spirit here in the US, bourbon whiskey, is distilled from a mash that always contains corn, malt and something else. The "something else" is usually rye, often wheat, and sometimes both. Tennessee Whiskey is so close to bourbon that they are often confused. I will confuse them deliberately for the rest of this article. Whenever I say "bourbon" I really mean "bourbon and Tennessee Whiskey."
The only real difference between the two is that all Tennessee Whiskey undergoes a charcoal leaching process before it is barreled which most bourbon does not.
Once there were thousands of small, farm-based whiskey distilleries in the US, mostly in Kentucky and Tennessee, but also in Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri and Kansas. Even a century ago, by which time whiskey-making was about as big and modern as it was going to get, there were more than 200. Fewer than half came back after Prohibition forced their 14-year hiatus. Today there are twelve operating whiskey distilleries in the US, two in Tennessee and ten in Kentucky.
Yet despite all of that consolidation, there are still a lot of different bourbons out there and real differences among them. Or, at least, a lot of variations on the theme.
One way bourbons differ is in their different yeast strains. Jim Beam, for example, still uses a wild yeast captured and bred more than 60 years ago by Jim Beam himself on the back porch of his Bardstown, Kentucky home. Most other distillers -- Early Times is one example -- use a pure cultured yeast. Booker Noe, Master Distiller Emeritus at Jim Beam (and Mr. Jim's grandson) says this makes the Beams "practical distillers" as opposed to "scientific distillers." Choosing the right yeast is at least as important to a distiller as it is to a brewer.
The characteristic that most distinguishes bourbon from other spirits is the effect of wood. Many beers, wines and spirits are aged in wood and benefit from that contact, but no one else takes it to the extreme bourbon-makers do. In a classic display of American profligacy, we use our barrels only once. We take thick, white oak, char it to a depth of about a quarter inch, fill it with new whiskey and, four or more years later, we are through with it. The used barrel may become a planter or a footstool or, even more likely, be sold to a distillery in Scotland, but it will never hold bourbon again.
With bourbon barrels, the precise depth of the char makes a big difference. Over the years, cooperages that make whiskey barrels have developed a numbering system. Number one is the lightest char. Number four is the heaviest, that is, the thickest, the most burned. Number four is also the practical limit. Char it any deeper and the wood won't be strong enough to hold the barrel together.
A deep char reveals more wood flavors, like vanilla, and a softening of grain flavors in the final spirit. The reverse is true for the lightest char. Number three is the most common specification for bourbon barrels. Number four is used by Jim Beam and Wild Turkey. Four Roses (Seagrams) specifies 3.5.
Everyone else uses number three. Maker's Mark insists on air-dried oak. The rest prefer kiln-dried. But barrels come last. Before you fill the barrels, or brew the beer, you have to prepare your mash. When distillers (and whiskey marketers) talk about a "formula" or a "recipe" for bourbon they generally mean the mash bill. This "bill" tells you the types of grains used and their proportions. The typical bourbon mash bill is 75% corn, 15% rye and 10% malt. The grains are milled, then cooked in water to liquefy their starch. Each type of grain is milled separately and added to the mash cooker separately, since corn needs to cook at a temperature that would scald rye. Malt is added last, after the mash has cooled to about 140ºF.
To lower the mash temperature quickly and keep production moving, most mash cookers are lined with pipes through which cold water is pumped at the appropriate moment. The cooker at the Four Roses Distillery outside Lawrenceburg, Kentucky is a little bit different. It is a huge pressure cooker that sits on a pedestal in the center of the main room of the main building. Because it is a pressure-cooker, it can reach temperatures of up to 300ºF. When the time comes to lower the temperature so rye can be added, a pipe around the entire top rim of the cooker suddenly releases a sheet of cold water onto the entire exterior surface. Spent water is collected in a drain that circles the bottom of the cooker.
The sight and sound of a sudden torrent of water striking a very large, hot, metal surface next to which one happens to be standing is quite startling for an unsuspecting visitor, a fact which provides regular amusement for the distillery staff.
The mash bill for most bourbons is the usual 75% corn, 15% rye, 10% malt, give or take a few percent. A much smaller group of bourbons, including Maker's Mark, Old Fitzgerald and W.L. Weller, use about the same percentages of corn and malt, but wheat instead of rye. A third group, into which I can definitely place only Old Grand-Dad and Basil Hayden's (both made by Jim Beam), uses a much greater percentage of rye (up to 27%) and a correspondingly lower percentage of corn (as little as 63%).
America's other widely sold straight whiskey, straight rye, is distinguished from bourbon only by its mash bill. In straight rye, the percentages of rye and corn are reversed, but not exactly, since rye has such an assertive flavor. Whether used as a minor ingredient in bourbon, or as the main ingredient on its own, rye adds the same kind of bitterness that hops add to beer, making it an ideal counterpoint to the sweetness of corn.
For straight rye whiskey, the mash must contain at least 51% rye by law, and most of the rye whiskies still on the market today are not much above that minimum. The rest of the mash is corn and the ubiquitous 10% malt. Rye whiskey used to be made primarily in Maryland and Pennsylvania, but now it is all made in Kentucky at bourbon distilleries. Wild Turkey makes a straight rye, as does Jim Beam. Beam also makes Old Overholt. Heaven Hill makes Rittenhouse, Pikesville and probably any other rye brand you happen to see. Canadian whiskies typically have a good percentage of straight rye whiskey in their blends, but there are no Canadian straight ryes sold in the USA
From the cooker, the mash is pumped into fermenters. Many distilleries use ancient cypress fermenters, open to the air. Cypress fermenters last a long time -- some in Kentucky are 100 years old -- but they are too expensive to replace. All of the new ones are stainless steel. Maker's Mark has cypress fermenters on the tour, stainless steel in back. Wild Turkey, Heaven Hill, Four Roses and George Dickel also have some of each, all open. The fermenters at the remaining distilleries are stainless steel only, some open (Jack Daniel's), most closed (Jim Beam, Early Times).
Added to the fermenter along with the mash is fresh yeast, as well as spent beer from the previous distillation. The beer is "spent" because all of its alcohol has been removed. The spent beer or "set-back" is used to stabilize the new mash and promote consistency from batch to batch. At some distilleries, as much as 25% of the fermentation tub is filled with spent beer. Getting the right percentage is very important. At Old Crow in the 1960s, a miscalculation during distillery expansion caused the percentage to change and the mistake wasn't discovered until 20 years later, according to a former distiller at the plant. During that time, Old Crow fell from no. 1 in sales to its present no. 6 rank and was sold to Jim Beam.
Because spent beer has a slightly acid taste, adding it "sours" the mash, hence the name "sour mash." All bourbons use the sour mash process, even though some don't mention it on their label. The alternative method, sweet mash, is seldom used today.
The process of distillation itself, which is where you might expect most of the differences among bourbons to occur, is actually where they are most alike. All American whiskey distilleries use column stills for their primary distillation. A bourbon column still is several feet in diameter and several stories tall. Its insides are copper and stainless steel. Beer enters at the top, steam rises from the bottom. A succession of perforated, stainless steel plates impedes the progress of the beer as gravity pulls it down through the column, giving the steam time to capture and carry away the spirit. The alcohol-laden vapor is quickly condensed into a clear, potent liquid called "low wine."
The low wine then goes into a second still, a doubler, which is a kind of pot still. The resulting distillate is called "high wine," "new whiskey" or "green whiskey." This is what goes into the barrel, sometimes diluted with water to lower its final proof to 120º or less (60% alcohol).
Proof of distillation and proof at barrel entry are two other ways bourbons vary. The maximum proof of distillation by law is 160º (80% alcohol), but distillers rarely exceed 70%, and 55% to 65% is normal. A lower proof of distillation retains more flavor from the beer. Wild Turkey is one of the lowest at about 110º.
The maximum proof at barrel entry is 120º (60% alcohol), so distillers with a higher proof of distillation (like Jim Beam, Four Roses and Early Times) add demineralized water to lower their proof. Others (Wild Turkey) don't. This produces a milder, smoother whiskey in the former and a heartier, more flavorful whiskey in the latter.
The barrels full of new whiskey go into somber rackhouses that dot the Kentucky and Tennessee countryside. It isn't bourbon until it has slumbered there for at least two years.
In 1994, bourbon distillers reached out to a new generation. They released more new products than at any time in memory. Every company unveiled at least one new bourbon; United Distillers (Guinness) launched six. Virtually all of the new offerings are prime bourbons intended to rival the finest scotch or Cognac.
And like so many good things in life, they all started with beer.
Copyright © 1995, Charles Kendrick Cowdery, All Rights Reserved.
First published in BEER, The Magazine, May/June 1995 issue.