

The Microdistilling Myth - nkurz
http://www.theatlantic.com/food/archive/2010/12/the-microdistilling-myth/68503/

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tptacek
This was such a cool little article. I even commented on it!

Something interesting you might not have realized before (I didn't!) ---
virtually every American craft whiskey you can think of is owned by some huge
company! To wit:

* Basil Hayden - Fortune Brands

* Knob Creek - Fortune Brands

* Eagle Rare - Sazerac

* Buffalo Trace - Sazerac

* Blantons - Sazerac

* Pappy Van Winkle - Sazerac

* Elijah Craig - Heaven Hill (Christian Bros)

* Black Maple - Heaven Hill

So one reason why it's apparently hard to be an indie whiskey distiller is
that the major brands have owned up a lot of very high-quality craft
distillers already; as the article points out, unlike with beer (where Coors
really does suck), widely-available well-known brand whiskey does tend to be
very good.

I think he overreaches with his argument by taking on all of distillery.
Whiskey is particularly hard to do well. It's aged for many years before being
brought to market, which makes it particularly capital-intensive to enter the
market, but not as costly to sustain a proven brand. It's also a spirit with
very well-defined parameters; unlike with gin, where a distinctive and
interesting new take would be welcome, whiskey is more like wine: the market
knows what it wants from quality product.

It _clearly_ must be easy to outdo vodka distillers. Dave Arnold at the French
Culinary managed to make extremely high-quality flavored vodka out of pure
food-grade alcohol --- an industrial supply! --- for a couple bucks a gallon.
So there's an easy counterexample.

Gin seems like another easy-to-enter market, and one where you can bring
innovation to market without relying on novelty products. Just use
different/better aromats.

I appreciate that Jim Beam is a quality product even though it's at the low
end of the quality spectrum, but I don't think he did his argument any favors
by saying that it was better than any indie craft whiskey he'd ever had, even
if it's true.

~~~
futuremint
Who owns Maker's Mark? It remains one of my favorite bourbons for some reason.
I think its one of the best for its price range. I think it beats Knob Creek
(similar price) hands down.

I think doing bourbon right is kind of like doing wine right. It certainly
takes more finesse than beer.

However the difficulty in mastering a craft seems orthogonal to whether its a
corporation or a single guy doing it.

If anything... bourbon whiskey being brewed by guys who have been doing it
forever implies that if you're a craft distillery... just keep distilling and
perfecting your craft and you'll do just fine.

~~~
cosgroveb
I highly recommend taking the distillery tour at Maker's Mark. They put a lot
of care into every aspect of the production process. They even let you dip
your own bottle :)

~~~
futuremint
Yep, I visited it on a drive through Kentucky once. Dipped my own bottle, got
the t-shirt, didn't have time for the tour though (had 2 little kids with me).

It was definitely cool to see where & how its made (and aged!).

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tibbon
I have a fantastic micro-distillery down the street from my place in Columbus
called Middle West Spirits
(<http://www.middlewestspirits.com/index.php/products/>).

Not only are the micro-distilling amazing vodka (and now whiskey and more
soon), but they are trying to make it the most sustainable and local based
business I have ever seen. Soon the building will be completely solar powered,
they are buying everything local (from the raw wheat from local farmers, honey
from local beekeepers, to having bottles custom made in lancaster, ohio). The
byproducts of the business are being sold/given to various places that can use
them positively (acetone goes to a cleaning company, etc). And the price of
everything is in the mid $30-range, so they aren't killing us for pricing
either. And they are working to get local laws modernized in a positive way to
support local distilling, which unfortunately those 'big business' distillers
are massively again.

Oh, and the product is outright amazing. Most vodka is downright boring to me,
and I prefer scotch, but this is really something that excites me.

~~~
tptacek
Is the whiskey any good? Vodka should be very easy. Good indie whiskey would
be a huge accomplishment.

~~~
tibbon
The whiskey is rather good. I'm a scotch guy myself, otherwise I was
considering even buying an entire small barrel of it for myself.

Their vodka seems to go above and beyond, and actually has flavor.

~~~
tptacek
You know that unflavored vodka is specifically _not_ supposed to have a
flavor, right?

~~~
tibbon
But if something is made of a product (say wheat, which this vodka is) then it
also stands to reason that there should be some flavor imparted by the
materials it is made with. The definition of vodka as having 'no flavor' is
just silly because every vodka out there has a flavor (your tongue knows
there's something there), but just generally that flavor is one of bad
alcohols that have been poorly distilled.

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JimmyL
I enjoy micro-distilled liquor (mostly gin) not because it's necessarily
better, but because it's different.

If I'm looking for a traditional gin, I don't think anyone's going to beat
Tanqueray 10. It's solid, consistent, well-balanced, and smooth. It tastes
like what traditional gin should taste like. If I'm looking for something more
interesting, I might have some Sacred Gin
(<http://www.sacredspiritscompany.com/>). It's equally as good as Tanqueray 10
(I derive a similar level of enjoyment out of drinking it), it just tastes
different - and sometimes I'm in the mood for that.

Whereas major distillers are all working on perfecting a similar recipe
(Tanqueray 10 tastes like a better Tanqueray, which takes like Beefeater,
which tastes like Gordon's, etc.), small micro-distillers are often agile
enough that they can take liberties with flavors that major producers can't.

~~~
2arrs2ells
You should add Hendrick's to your mix of gins!

------
adestefan
It's difficult to compare brewers and distillers. It's easy to hide flaws in
beer, but very difficult to do that in liquor.

The time to market is also very different in the two fields. With modern
brewing equipment you can go grain to glass in as little as 2 weeks. With a
whiskey you're talking at least a couple months of aging.

When making beer there are 23 major categories of beer. As a brewer you can
make mist of those with just different ingredients. When distilling you're
focus is usually on only one type of spirit. In that case it's all or nothing.

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cap10morgan
Very uninformed article. Big distillers, like big anything, exist to make a
profit via broad appeal. Many micro distillers are trying to be more
interesting than that.

Of course there are counter-examples on both sides. But Stranahan's (no longer
micro) and Leopold Bros. are two examples of great micro-whiskeys from
Colorado. If I were so inclined, I could recklessly extrapolate from that
anecdote to reach the opposite conclusion as the article does.

------
billswift
Lindsay's Technical Books has several books, mostly late 19th century
reprints, on distilling like this one, _A Practical Treatise on the Raw
Materials and the Distillation and Rectification of Alcohol_ ,
<http://www.lindsaybks.com/bks9/brannt/index.html>

------
zmanian
I've had Old Potrero and Four Grain Bourbon and thought they were both
fantastic.

But thats not inconsistent with the article. They were different and
interesting but not necessarily better than the big distilleries.

~~~
tptacek
Old Potrero isn't a bourbon; I wonder if the dynamics of rye are different
from those of bourbon. Rye tends to be cheaper and less aged (I prefer it to
bourbon, for what it's worth). Also: Old Potrero is Anchor Brewing. Not
exactly a small company.

Woodford Reserve (Four Grain) is Jack Daniels. See what I mean about Big
Whiskey? It's inescapable!

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
Do you have a recommendation for a good rye that's not too pricy? I'm fairly
new to bourbon: the only one I've tried and enjoyed is Knob Creek.

~~~
tptacek
The great thing about rye is that it isn't pricey. I like Russells on the low
end; the "Makers" of rye seems to be Templeton these days; on the high end,
I'm _really_ liking Whistlepig.

