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Are the new micro distilleries really craft? Part Three
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You’re on vacation. You’re looking at the brochures for sights to see. “This sounds interesting,” you think. A craft distillery.You go and it’s really cool. It’s small, lots of bare wood, the still is all copper and chrome, brightly polished. There are lots of pipes and tanks and barrels. And in the gift shop, bottles of vodka, gin, brandy, whiskey and rum, all made right there, by hand.
Or are they? And if they are, are they really anything special?
Ingredients are part of the question. Buying wash instead of starting with whole grain is another part of it. So are enzymes. (That discussion is in Part One, here; and Part Two, here.)
Another issue is equipment. Most micro distillers make a big deal about how they use pot stills, not column stills. What they actually use are hybrid stills. They are batch process, like pot stills, but instead of an alembic (the simple, one-piece still top that’s shaped like a tear drop), their pots are topped by...columns, exactly like the ones that give column stills their name.
Part of the problem is that these hybrid stills aren’t designed to make whiskey the way Americans make whiskey. They are European and designed to make brandy and other fruit spirits. They will distill a grain wash okay, into whiskey or even vodka if that’s what you want, but they can’t handle an American distiller’s beer, which contains husks and other undissolved grain solids. Even a wash made from corn and rye, instead of just malt, will give these stills fits.
Then there’s aging. Except for vodka and other clear spirits, most distilled spirits are aged in oak barrels, typically for years, occasionally for decades. Most micro-distillers can’t wait that long, so they sell unaged or very lightly aged products. There’s nothing wrong with that. There always have been unaged and young spirits sold, but aging is another part of the craft and most micro distillers give it short shrift. Virtually all bourbon whiskey is aged for more than four years. I know of only one micro distillery whiskey aged that long and it costs $300 a bottle.
It gets worse. Some micro distillers don’t make anything. They buy bulk spirits and bottle them. They have a distillery, or plan to; it’s making something, or will soon. The bulk goods are just a bridge until their own product is ready for sale, they say, but several have been saying that for years and not exactly publicizing how the only product they sell is one they didn’t make and probably can never duplicate.
The moral of this story is caveat emptor, let the buyer beware, especially if you think you are buying an artisanal product and that matters to you. Do some research, ask questions, be skeptical. Most producers won’t lie to you outright, but you have to ask the right questions and listen to the answers very carefully.
Do these practices make these distillers, or their products, bad? Not necessarily, but that’s not the question. The question is, are these practices craft? Are they artisanal? Are they traditional? That’s where many of these new micro distilleries have issues.
If you would like to read the whole piece on Examiner, start here.
If you would rather read the whole thing in one place, go here.
For more info: If you would like to engage some micro distillers in a discussion of these issues, or just ask them to tell you their side of the story, there is a good place to do that. The ADI has an open forum called ADI Forums. You have to register to participate. The site is here.
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