#I got him a oak barrel for making his own whiskey from other alcohols last year

[seabeck]

why are boyfriends so hard to buy gifts for? is it because I keep outdoing myself every year?

[jchb32273]

Fictober 2019 - Day 9

Fanfiction - Dragon Age AO3 Link

Two days behind now... oh well! Have fun today with... 

There Is A Certain Taste To It.

~~~~~

Leliana bounced into our dorm room, her usual perky self. She saw me at my desk looking through a book and rolled her eyes.

“Studying again?” she tittered. “It’s a nice day out today and the roads are finally clear! We could go to the mall, or maybe…” she trailed off when she noticed the book I was flipping through. “A cookbook?”

“A cake cookbook,” I said with a smile.

“Why are you looking at cake recipes? What’s the upcoming occasion?”

“Who says it’s for anything special?” I blushed. “Maybe I just want to learn how to bake!”

“Riiight…” she giggled. “Your blush says it all. It’s for loverboy, isn’t it?!”

I sighed. “His birthday is tomorrow. Twenty-third of Wintersmarch.”

“Oh, I love birthdays! They are so much fun! Are you planning anything else?”

“His bandmates are taking him to a local pub. I just asked Dorian if I could bring a cake. He said yes, and gave me some money to buy one… but then I thought a homemade cake would be much tastier than a store-bought one.”

“What’s Alistair’s poison?” she asked. At my confused look, she clarified. “What flavor cake is his favorite?”

“He likes chocolate. I thought at first I’d make him a cheesecake, but then I thought that was too obvious.” I flipped through the cookbook, showing Leli all of the recipes I had bookmarked. “But there are so many types!”

She placed her finger down on a page that caught her eye. “Ooh, a chocolate whiskey cake… with a whiskey caramel drizzle! That sounds very drool-worthy!” She then plucked the book out of my hand and said, “Let’s head to the supermarket!”

An hour later we were in our dorm’s small kitchenette, located just off the lobby. I had everything spread out and ready.

“Okay, the first step,” I read. “Preheat the oven to 180C.”

Leliana pushed the buttons on the stove, but nothing happened. “Um, Kylara? I think our oven is broken.”

Wynne, our dorm mother walked by just then. “Ah, yes. Sorry girls. It is broken. The repairman can’t come by to fix it until the very end of the month.”

“Now what?”

“Call Cullen,” she suggested. Maybe their dorm’s oven is working.”

After packing everything back up and hoofing over to Cullen’s dorm building, he greeted us outside.

“Your oven is working, yes?” Leli asked again.

Cullen had an interesting look on his face. “Um, yeah… it works. Not sure if you are going to want to use it though.”

“Why not?” I asked as we headed through their lobby. However, he didn’t have to answer. It was made perfectly clear once we saw the condition it was in. Grime, oil, and all sorts of caked-on food and grease were all over.

Cullen looked embarrassed. “Well, we are a bunch of dudes living together!”

“Really?” I said, eyebrows raised. “That is your excuse to not clean?” I sighed as looked at the filth-ridden stove. “I’m surprised this hasn’t caught on fire yet…”

“Or been condemned,” Leliana shook her head.

“Please tell me you have some cleaning supplies?” I asked Cullen.

He opened the cupboard below the sink and to our surprise, it was filled with brand-new, unopened supplies. I even found a scouring brush and rubber work gloves. “Well, let’s get this done!” I exclaimed.

Two hours later, I had the stove, sink, counters, and even their refrigerator cleaned out. Oh, the mess I had to scour out of it… I never wanted to think about ever again! The work had gone fairly smoothly with both Cullen and Leli helping. We had gathered a bit of an audience of boys standing around and watching us clean. When we had finished, there were whistles and applause.

I turned to those standing about and lightly scolded, “Don’t let it get like that again!”

Sadly, no one seemed to care as they all wandered off. I sighed.

“Don’t worry, ‘Lara. I’ll get a few other guys to help me keep it clean from now on. You have my thanks and appreciation, at the very least.” He looked at the sparkling stove and clean countertops. “So, after all of this, what are you making? Looks like cake ingredients?” Then he slapped his forehead. “That’s right! Alistair’s birthday is tomorrow! That is really nice of you to make him a cake. You're going let me help too, I hope!”

The clean oven was now preheating and I was starting to measure out the ingredients. I muttered quietly to myself. “Let’s see… 450 grams of sugar, 450 grams of flour…” Then my phone buzzed. I wiped my hands on my apron and pulled my phone out. It was Alistair.

[15:40] Hey Kylara, love. What are you up to?

        Not much. Just planning a little surprise for tomorrow… 😘 [15:40]

[15:41] Really? What is happening tomorrow?

                                         As if you don’t know, Mr Smarty-Pants. [15:42]

[15:42] Does it involve you in some barely-there lingerie?

                                                                                                        😲 [15:43]

[15:44] Well, I can dream, can’t I? ❤️❤️❤️

                                                                             😨 You are so evil! [15:44]

[15:45] That’s me, Mr Charming 😈

[15:45] So you’ll be there, tomorrow? 7 pm?

                                                         Wouldn’t dream of missing it! [15:46]

                                                       Anyhoo… Let me get back to my task.                                                           Don’t want to mess it up for you! [15:47]

[15:47] Awww! You’re so good to me, sweetheart! 😍

Leliana saw Kylara grinning as she texted on her phone. It has to be Alistair. No one else makes her smile like that! I am so glad they are together… it has done wonders to help boost Kylara’s opinion of herself! Then she stared at the bowl. Wonder where she left off with the ingredients? Hmm, 450 grams of both sugar and flour? She eyed the bowl. That doesn’t look like enough. I better add a bit more… to be safe, of course. Then Leliana’s phone rang. She answered it.

Cullen, meanwhile, was in charge of making the whiskey caramel sauce for the cake. The first and second batches were both burnt and he scowled as he stared at the black goo in the pot. I am a science major! I can follow complex formulas down to the smallest detail! So how come I can’t seem to get this stupid caramel recipe to work?! He stated at his own phone. I suppose if my lab partner would stop texting me with his incessant questions and distracting me… He sighed. Well, guess I start over… again!

I closed the app on my phone and saw Leli was now on her phone. She was supposed to be in charge of the wet ingredients for the cake. In her mixing bowl, I could see the eggs and the buttermilk were there, but not mixed yet. So I quickly started the electric mixer and blended what she had so far. Then I set it down and went back to my bowl, which so far had only the flour and sugar. I added in the cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and the salt and used a fork to stir it all up.

With that done, I saw Leli was still on her phone. I shrugged and headed back to her bowl and added in the oil, vanilla, warm water, and the imitation whiskey flavoring that I had found at the market. As I blended those, I heard my phone chirp again.

Well, we are mostly done now… just need to mix the wet with the dry and then cook the cake. Looks like Cullen is almost done with the caramel… I’ll go ahead and see what he wants now.

[16:09] What are you wearing tomorrow night, sweetie?

Leli ended the call with her girlfriend and then glanced at the counter. Looks like Kylara mixed up my eggs and buttermilk. So where did I leave off? Oh, right. She added the next ingredients and then glanced at the last one. Imitation whiskey? Eww! We don’t want to ruin a cake with that crap. She knelt down and plucked out several sample size bottles of Elijah Craig Barrel Proof Bourbon Whiskey. Hmm, 136 Proof, which means 68% Alcohol. Aw, yes! That will definitely give the cake some kick! And look! Notes of oak, walnuts, caramel, and vanilla! Sounds perfect! After adding a good 120ml of the whiskey to her wet ingredients (more than twice what the recipe called for… because more booze = more fun, yes?), she thought, better give some of this good stuff to Cullen for his caramel sauce too.

Finally, I put my phone away again and approached the counter.

“All set to mix, Leli?”

“Yes! This cake will be so awesome! Your Alibear is going to love it!”

I prepped the greased and floured cake pans, then poured Leli’s wet ingredients over my dry. It was then I noticed the pungent smell of whiskey.

“Uh… Leli? Why do the wet ingredients reek of alcohol?”

“That imitation crud you bought from the supermarket won’t make a decent cake for your boyfriend! So I added the real stuff!” She grinned.

My eyes were watering. “Maker! How much, and what proof?!”

She showed me the small empty bottle. “136 proof! We won’t even have to eat this to get drunk! The fumes alone will- ”

“Tut-tut! The alcohol cooks off! It’ll be fine, Kylara!”

“Well… technically that is true… I suppose if this fails, we might have time to make another.”

I mixed the wet and dry together. At first, I thought there was too much liquid, but once I had finished, it looked to be the normal consistency of cake batter. However, pouring it into the two prepped pans I had soon revealed a problem. I had too much extra batter. “I thought this was to make two round cakes. Why do I have leftover batter?”

“Cullen?” Leli got his attention from his phone, where he’d been texting someone madly. “Any cake pans in your cupboards?”

“Hang on a sec…” He stashed his phone. “Cake pans? I think we have a rectangular one.” He opened and searched. “Here it is!” He handed me the pan.

“So now we have a rectangle and two circle cakes… my won’t this look professional,” I grumbled.

“But it isn’t. That’s the point! It is a homemade cake!” Leli said as she greased and floured the third pan. “It’ll be fine.” At the look on my face, she sighed. “If it bugs you that much, Kylara, we can cut circles from the rectangle. That’ll work, yes?”

I brightened. “You’re right, Leli! Why didn’t I think of that!”

“Because you’re too worried about impressing your loverboy?”

I punched her lightly on the arm. “I suppose so,” I replied jokingly.

After baking, we pulled all three cakes from the oven. As they cooled, the three of us sat around, talking about various things.

We ended up getting four rounds total – the two I had originally prepped, and two more cut from the large rectangle. The leftovers we passed out to the guys in the lobby of Cullen’s dorm. Since none of them spit it out, I took that as a good sign that the cake was fine.

Cullen drizzled his whiskey caramel sauce on top… and it looked fantastic!

After packing (and cleaning) everything up, there was nothing left to do until the party.

“Happy birthday, to our friend Alistaaiirr! Happy birthday, to yooooouuu!”

Alistair blew out the twenty-two candles on his cake and cheers erupted from the crowd of friends at the pub.

“Thank you, guys! This is fantastic!” He then pulled me into his embrace. “The cake looks great, love! You didn’t have to go to all this trouble for me… but thank you all the same.” He stole a quick kiss when the others weren’t looking, then out-loud said, “Well? Let’s eat!”

The cake was quickly sliced and then everyone waited while Alistair took the first bite. He chewed, then swallowed, then his eyes began to water. “Whew! That is strong!” he shouted. “There is a certain taste to it…” He paused to think, then exclaimed, “Whiskey! It’s chocolate caramel whiskey cake!”

I took the next bite and almost choked. Leli and Cullen both had poured enough alcohol in the cake and sauce to choke a mule! Even cooked, this is one pungent cake!

“Is it okay, Alistair?” I asked, worried. “Seems certain other people involved might have been a bit heavy-handed with the booze…” I said as I arched an eyebrow at Leliana. She just giggled and shrugged.

He leaned down and murmured in my ear, “It’s the thought that really counts, love. For that, you win some extra special bonus points from me tonight…”

Fenris, after watching the others take a bite or two of the cake and then set it down, finally took his own nibble.

“Hmm… not bad,” he grunted. “Could’ve used more whiskey though.”

Everyone stared at him, then burst out laughing!

[adambstingus]

The Greatest Spirits Book Ever Written

The greatest book I know of ever written about distilled spirits is 826 pages long, and it wasn’t written so much as transcribed. What’s more, the printed original is almost unobtainable, even at great price, although it can be found online (here, for example); you can also get a relatively cheap, bound print of the PDF, although it will be reduced to some two-thirds of the size of the original, making the closely printed text, most of it double column, damned difficult to read.

If you have the patience to deal with the PDF or manage to get hold of a legible print copy, you’d better clear your schedule. Hold all calls, disconnect the doorbell, pour yourself a good, stiff drink. The Final Report of the Royal Commission on Whiskey and Other Potable Spirits (sometimes it’s bound with the title as Interim Report) takes no little amount of concentration, but what’s in there tells you more than any other book how the majority of the spirits you drink today came to be the way that they are (that is, unless you mostly drink vodka and tequila).

The Royal Commission on Whiskey and Other Potable Spirits was the result of a loud and very public squabble being conducted in Britain in the late nineteenth and early 20th centuries about just what could call itself whiskey (the Commission, by the way, spelled it with the ‘e’ throughout its report, so suck it, “Scotch-and-Canadian-are-whisky-Irish-and-American-are-whiskey” pedants). On the one side were all of the Irish distillers who made their product the old, expensive way, in pot stills, and a portion of the Scottish ones. On the other side were those who used modern column or continuous stills to make their considerably cheaper product; a few of them were in Northern Ireland, but most were in Scotland’s industrial Lowlands. In between were many of the Scottish pot-still malt whiskey makers, who might agree in theory with the first bunch but sold so much of their product to blenders, who combined it with the column-still stuff, that they found it prudent to stay on the sidelines.

Basically, the pot-still people held that the other stuff, whatever it was, wasn’t whiskey, and they wanted the government to say that and stop its makers from labeling it thus. The column still people said that it was, and had 60-percent of the market by volume to prove it. A Parliamentary committee had already looked into the debate 10 years back, but kicked the can down the road. So, in 1908, King Edward VII had Henry James, Baron James of Hereford, impanel a group of experts to look into the question. And, while they were at it, they might as well look into brandy, rum, and gin, the other important categories of spirit in the British market. They were dealing with the same kinds of issues.

By the end of the 19th century, the spirits industry in the industrialized world was at a crossroads. The distiller’s art was an old one, but it had only been brought to perfection a hundred-odd years earlier with a broad consensus that the way to make a quality spirit was to distill your wash—wine, beer, fermented sugarcane juice, whatever—slowly in copper pot stills, cutting out the “heads” and the “tails” (the first and last parts of the distillate) and then take the resulting “low wines,” put them in another still, cut out the heads and tails again, and sometimes even repeat the process a third time. The resulting spirit, which was usually about 60 or 70 percent alcohol (and never much more than 80 percent) would be appealingly oily in texture and rich in flavor, but it took a lot of labor to make and required considerable aging in oak barrels to get rid of the sharper, more volatile compounds in it and become mellow enough to drink.

Meanwhile, in the 1830s a new technology was introduced to disrupt things. Continuous distillation fed the wash into the top of a tall, copper column and, as it trickled down through a series of perforated plates, pumped live steam through it to strip off the alcohol. The resulting product was as much as 94 percent alcohol—it would take Lord knows how many distillations to achieve that in a pot still—and all you had to do was pump the wash in at the top, pull off the alcohol from a tube in the side and let the spent wash drain out of the bottom. You could keep it running as long as you had wash to pump in.

Being so pure, the spirit from these stills lacked many of the extra compounds that made pot-still spirits so rich in flavor. But that also meant it took a lot less aging, if any at all, to make it palatable; in fact, you could easily make a spirit that would be so neutral in flavor that it would be hard to detect if you mixed it with, say, whiskey, rum or brandy. For a great many distillers this presented a devil’s dilemma: Do you stick with a labor-intensive, top-quality product as made by your grandfather and his father before him and watch your market be eroded year in and year out? Or do you ditch the craft and install a column, saving your market, and try to make the best product you can for the price you can get for it?

That’s the battle that unfolds in the Report—although not actually in the Report itself. The book, you see, is in four parts, of which that is only the first and, at 47 pages, the shortest. It is also, surprisingly, the least interesting. The last part is a 67-page set of indices and digests of the proceedings; most useful. The heart of the book, however, is in the two fat volumes that constitute the “Minutes of Evidence.”

Between March 2, 1908, and May 17, 1909, the Commission sat for a total of 37 days. During those days, Lord James and his seven commissioners—a mix of doctors, lawyers, scientists, and government men—heard the testimony of 116 witnesses. The Minutes of Evidence are that testimony, painstakingly transcribed (along with whatever exhibits the witnesses brought, attached as appendices).

As for those witnesses, they include a good many doctors, lawyers and scientists, to be sure, whose testimony is for the most part ass-achingly dull. But they also include James Dewar, Andrew Jameson, John Talbot Power, and Alexander Walker. If you drink Scotch or Irish whiskey, you have drunk the products of their firms. Cognac-drinkers will recognize James Hennessy, Edward Martell, Andre Hine, and Jacques Delamain.

For gin, the witnesses include Herman Jansen, one of the great names in the history of Dutch genever-distilling, Alfred Gilbey, R. C. W. Currie of Tanqueray Gordon & Co. and Henry Gore Hawker of Coates & Co., makers of Plymouth Gin. For rum, there are Frederick H. D. Man, whose family’s firm supplied all the rum to the Royal Navy and in fact controlled, by his estimate, three-fourths to seven-eighths of the British rum trade, and the very feisty James Nolan, representative of Jamaica’s rum distillers.

Among the other current brands represented are Lucas Bols, Angostura, DeKuyper, Teacher’s, and a whole raft of single-malt Scotches (William Ross, head of the Distillers Co. Limited, which owned a number of them, was a witness).

When these men—and they are all men—testified, they had to describe in detail what they did: what their products were fermented from, how they were distilled, how they were aged, how they were sold and marketed. They had to discuss their commercial philosophies, their visions for the industry, their traditions and innovations. If they declined to take a stand on something, they were pressed. Some of the testimony went on for hours. James Hennessy was on the stand for almost two whole days.

Taken as a whole, the Minutes of Evidence are overwhelming. I have not read them all, or even come close: The testimony covers 573 of those tiny-type, double-column pages—some 850,000 words, by my quick-and-dirty calculation. There is a lot in there that is tedious and little that is truly dramatic. But every time I dip in, whether for a paragraph or a string of witnesses, I learn something. Things like the fact that pure pot-still Irish whiskey, now made exclusively from malted and unmalted barley, used to be made from those two, plus significant percentages of rye and oats and sometimes wheat, or that Dutch distillers added lots of juniper to their genever for some of their export markets (e.g., the United States) and little or none for others (e.g., Great Britain), or that Jamaican distillers made their rum not just from molasses, but rather from that with “dunder,” or spent wash, and the skimming from the process of boiling cane juice down into sugar.

What really makes the book sing for me, though, is the fierce pride of the old-fashioned pot distillers, men who had spent years mastering a complex and exacting craft (pot distillation is easy; good, consistent pot distillation is extremely difficult, as anyone who has tasted a lot of micro-distilled whiskey can attest). James Hennessy, the head of the largest, most prestigious firm in Cognac, with more than a quarter of the market, was able to testify in minute detail to every aspect of his business, not just the marketing, the management, the regulation and taxation of it, the winemaking, the distilling, the aging and the blending. His modern successor could not do that.

When faced with a technology that could turn out incredible volumes of clean, if relatively flavorless, product at a fraction of the cost, small wonder some of these men got truculent. John Talbot Power, for instance, who when asked if, according to him, the column-still stuff had “any of the characteristics of whiskey,” replied “none whatever,” adding that “it would not be accepted by any Irishman as whiskey.” Likewise, the aforementioned James Nolan, who maintains over and over that “only pots still spirits [should] be allowed to be sold as rum,” even if that meant disqualifying everything made in Demerara and the rest of the British West Indies. As for blending, let’s just say that they thought “adulteration” was a more accurate term (that’s how Herman Jansen regarded the incorporation of column still spirit into genever).

Against this, the many column distillers and blenders who testified could only say things like, (and here I’m summarizing), “our product is medically sound”; “it is more efficient to work how we do”; “it lets us make an acceptable product at a good price”; and “we only sell it in the Colonies”—and if not the colonies, in Asia, Africa, or America.

Nowadays, of course, blending is a part of the landscape and in most spirit categories the market has found a way to let column spirits, pot spirits and blends of both coexist, all neatly stratified by price (rum, alas, has not). Even the Irish, the most stubborn holdouts, began offering a blended product in the 1950s, although they still made a little of their pure pot still and single malt whiskey.

But that, it turns out, is what the actual Commissioners’ report suggested: At the end, the definition of whiskey it came up with after hearing all that testimony was “a spirit obtained by distillation from a mash of cereal grains saccharified by the diastase of malt”; Scotch whiskey was simply that, distilled in Scotland, and Irish whiskey that, distilled in Ireland. Pot, column, whatever. In declining to take a stand, it gave us the world of drinks we have today.

But boy, to walk through the John Power distillery with Arthur Talbot Power, or the Hennessy warehouses with James Hennessy must have been something.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/the-greatest-spirits-book-ever-written/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/183321226567

[samanthasroberts]

The Greatest Spirits Book Ever Written

The greatest book I know of ever written about distilled spirits is 826 pages long, and it wasn’t written so much as transcribed. What’s more, the printed original is almost unobtainable, even at great price, although it can be found online (here, for example); you can also get a relatively cheap, bound print of the PDF, although it will be reduced to some two-thirds of the size of the original, making the closely printed text, most of it double column, damned difficult to read.

If you have the patience to deal with the PDF or manage to get hold of a legible print copy, you’d better clear your schedule. Hold all calls, disconnect the doorbell, pour yourself a good, stiff drink. The Final Report of the Royal Commission on Whiskey and Other Potable Spirits (sometimes it’s bound with the title as Interim Report) takes no little amount of concentration, but what’s in there tells you more than any other book how the majority of the spirits you drink today came to be the way that they are (that is, unless you mostly drink vodka and tequila).

The Royal Commission on Whiskey and Other Potable Spirits was the result of a loud and very public squabble being conducted in Britain in the late nineteenth and early 20th centuries about just what could call itself whiskey (the Commission, by the way, spelled it with the ‘e’ throughout its report, so suck it, “Scotch-and-Canadian-are-whisky-Irish-and-American-are-whiskey” pedants). On the one side were all of the Irish distillers who made their product the old, expensive way, in pot stills, and a portion of the Scottish ones. On the other side were those who used modern column or continuous stills to make their considerably cheaper product; a few of them were in Northern Ireland, but most were in Scotland’s industrial Lowlands. In between were many of the Scottish pot-still malt whiskey makers, who might agree in theory with the first bunch but sold so much of their product to blenders, who combined it with the column-still stuff, that they found it prudent to stay on the sidelines.

Basically, the pot-still people held that the other stuff, whatever it was, wasn’t whiskey, and they wanted the government to say that and stop its makers from labeling it thus. The column still people said that it was, and had 60-percent of the market by volume to prove it. A Parliamentary committee had already looked into the debate 10 years back, but kicked the can down the road. So, in 1908, King Edward VII had Henry James, Baron James of Hereford, impanel a group of experts to look into the question. And, while they were at it, they might as well look into brandy, rum, and gin, the other important categories of spirit in the British market. They were dealing with the same kinds of issues.

By the end of the 19th century, the spirits industry in the industrialized world was at a crossroads. The distiller’s art was an old one, but it had only been brought to perfection a hundred-odd years earlier with a broad consensus that the way to make a quality spirit was to distill your wash—wine, beer, fermented sugarcane juice, whatever—slowly in copper pot stills, cutting out the “heads” and the “tails” (the first and last parts of the distillate) and then take the resulting “low wines,” put them in another still, cut out the heads and tails again, and sometimes even repeat the process a third time. The resulting spirit, which was usually about 60 or 70 percent alcohol (and never much more than 80 percent) would be appealingly oily in texture and rich in flavor, but it took a lot of labor to make and required considerable aging in oak barrels to get rid of the sharper, more volatile compounds in it and become mellow enough to drink.

Meanwhile, in the 1830s a new technology was introduced to disrupt things. Continuous distillation fed the wash into the top of a tall, copper column and, as it trickled down through a series of perforated plates, pumped live steam through it to strip off the alcohol. The resulting product was as much as 94 percent alcohol—it would take Lord knows how many distillations to achieve that in a pot still—and all you had to do was pump the wash in at the top, pull off the alcohol from a tube in the side and let the spent wash drain out of the bottom. You could keep it running as long as you had wash to pump in.

Being so pure, the spirit from these stills lacked many of the extra compounds that made pot-still spirits so rich in flavor. But that also meant it took a lot less aging, if any at all, to make it palatable; in fact, you could easily make a spirit that would be so neutral in flavor that it would be hard to detect if you mixed it with, say, whiskey, rum or brandy. For a great many distillers this presented a devil’s dilemma: Do you stick with a labor-intensive, top-quality product as made by your grandfather and his father before him and watch your market be eroded year in and year out? Or do you ditch the craft and install a column, saving your market, and try to make the best product you can for the price you can get for it?

That’s the battle that unfolds in the Report—although not actually in the Report itself. The book, you see, is in four parts, of which that is only the first and, at 47 pages, the shortest. It is also, surprisingly, the least interesting. The last part is a 67-page set of indices and digests of the proceedings; most useful. The heart of the book, however, is in the two fat volumes that constitute the “Minutes of Evidence.”

Between March 2, 1908, and May 17, 1909, the Commission sat for a total of 37 days. During those days, Lord James and his seven commissioners—a mix of doctors, lawyers, scientists, and government men—heard the testimony of 116 witnesses. The Minutes of Evidence are that testimony, painstakingly transcribed (along with whatever exhibits the witnesses brought, attached as appendices).

As for those witnesses, they include a good many doctors, lawyers and scientists, to be sure, whose testimony is for the most part ass-achingly dull. But they also include James Dewar, Andrew Jameson, John Talbot Power, and Alexander Walker. If you drink Scotch or Irish whiskey, you have drunk the products of their firms. Cognac-drinkers will recognize James Hennessy, Edward Martell, Andre Hine, and Jacques Delamain.

For gin, the witnesses include Herman Jansen, one of the great names in the history of Dutch genever-distilling, Alfred Gilbey, R. C. W. Currie of Tanqueray Gordon & Co. and Henry Gore Hawker of Coates & Co., makers of Plymouth Gin. For rum, there are Frederick H. D. Man, whose family’s firm supplied all the rum to the Royal Navy and in fact controlled, by his estimate, three-fourths to seven-eighths of the British rum trade, and the very feisty James Nolan, representative of Jamaica’s rum distillers.

Among the other current brands represented are Lucas Bols, Angostura, DeKuyper, Teacher’s, and a whole raft of single-malt Scotches (William Ross, head of the Distillers Co. Limited, which owned a number of them, was a witness).

When these men—and they are all men—testified, they had to describe in detail what they did: what their products were fermented from, how they were distilled, how they were aged, how they were sold and marketed. They had to discuss their commercial philosophies, their visions for the industry, their traditions and innovations. If they declined to take a stand on something, they were pressed. Some of the testimony went on for hours. James Hennessy was on the stand for almost two whole days.

Taken as a whole, the Minutes of Evidence are overwhelming. I have not read them all, or even come close: The testimony covers 573 of those tiny-type, double-column pages—some 850,000 words, by my quick-and-dirty calculation. There is a lot in there that is tedious and little that is truly dramatic. But every time I dip in, whether for a paragraph or a string of witnesses, I learn something. Things like the fact that pure pot-still Irish whiskey, now made exclusively from malted and unmalted barley, used to be made from those two, plus significant percentages of rye and oats and sometimes wheat, or that Dutch distillers added lots of juniper to their genever for some of their export markets (e.g., the United States) and little or none for others (e.g., Great Britain), or that Jamaican distillers made their rum not just from molasses, but rather from that with “dunder,” or spent wash, and the skimming from the process of boiling cane juice down into sugar.

What really makes the book sing for me, though, is the fierce pride of the old-fashioned pot distillers, men who had spent years mastering a complex and exacting craft (pot distillation is easy; good, consistent pot distillation is extremely difficult, as anyone who has tasted a lot of micro-distilled whiskey can attest). James Hennessy, the head of the largest, most prestigious firm in Cognac, with more than a quarter of the market, was able to testify in minute detail to every aspect of his business, not just the marketing, the management, the regulation and taxation of it, the winemaking, the distilling, the aging and the blending. His modern successor could not do that.

When faced with a technology that could turn out incredible volumes of clean, if relatively flavorless, product at a fraction of the cost, small wonder some of these men got truculent. John Talbot Power, for instance, who when asked if, according to him, the column-still stuff had “any of the characteristics of whiskey,” replied “none whatever,” adding that “it would not be accepted by any Irishman as whiskey.” Likewise, the aforementioned James Nolan, who maintains over and over that “only pots still spirits [should] be allowed to be sold as rum,” even if that meant disqualifying everything made in Demerara and the rest of the British West Indies. As for blending, let’s just say that they thought “adulteration” was a more accurate term (that’s how Herman Jansen regarded the incorporation of column still spirit into genever).

Against this, the many column distillers and blenders who testified could only say things like, (and here I’m summarizing), “our product is medically sound”; “it is more efficient to work how we do”; “it lets us make an acceptable product at a good price”; and “we only sell it in the Colonies”—and if not the colonies, in Asia, Africa, or America.

Nowadays, of course, blending is a part of the landscape and in most spirit categories the market has found a way to let column spirits, pot spirits and blends of both coexist, all neatly stratified by price (rum, alas, has not). Even the Irish, the most stubborn holdouts, began offering a blended product in the 1950s, although they still made a little of their pure pot still and single malt whiskey.

But that, it turns out, is what the actual Commissioners’ report suggested: At the end, the definition of whiskey it came up with after hearing all that testimony was “a spirit obtained by distillation from a mash of cereal grains saccharified by the diastase of malt”; Scotch whiskey was simply that, distilled in Scotland, and Irish whiskey that, distilled in Ireland. Pot, column, whatever. In declining to take a stand, it gave us the world of drinks we have today.

But boy, to walk through the John Power distillery with Arthur Talbot Power, or the Hennessy warehouses with James Hennessy must have been something.

Source: http://allofbeer.com/the-greatest-spirits-book-ever-written/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2019/03/08/the-greatest-spirits-book-ever-written/

[allofbeercom]

The Greatest Spirits Book Ever Written

The greatest book I know of ever written about distilled spirits is 826 pages long, and it wasn’t written so much as transcribed. What’s more, the printed original is almost unobtainable, even at great price, although it can be found online (here, for example); you can also get a relatively cheap, bound print of the PDF, although it will be reduced to some two-thirds of the size of the original, making the closely printed text, most of it double column, damned difficult to read.

If you have the patience to deal with the PDF or manage to get hold of a legible print copy, you’d better clear your schedule. Hold all calls, disconnect the doorbell, pour yourself a good, stiff drink. The Final Report of the Royal Commission on Whiskey and Other Potable Spirits (sometimes it’s bound with the title as Interim Report) takes no little amount of concentration, but what’s in there tells you more than any other book how the majority of the spirits you drink today came to be the way that they are (that is, unless you mostly drink vodka and tequila).

The Royal Commission on Whiskey and Other Potable Spirits was the result of a loud and very public squabble being conducted in Britain in the late nineteenth and early 20th centuries about just what could call itself whiskey (the Commission, by the way, spelled it with the ‘e’ throughout its report, so suck it, “Scotch-and-Canadian-are-whisky-Irish-and-American-are-whiskey” pedants). On the one side were all of the Irish distillers who made their product the old, expensive way, in pot stills, and a portion of the Scottish ones. On the other side were those who used modern column or continuous stills to make their considerably cheaper product; a few of them were in Northern Ireland, but most were in Scotland’s industrial Lowlands. In between were many of the Scottish pot-still malt whiskey makers, who might agree in theory with the first bunch but sold so much of their product to blenders, who combined it with the column-still stuff, that they found it prudent to stay on the sidelines.

Basically, the pot-still people held that the other stuff, whatever it was, wasn’t whiskey, and they wanted the government to say that and stop its makers from labeling it thus. The column still people said that it was, and had 60-percent of the market by volume to prove it. A Parliamentary committee had already looked into the debate 10 years back, but kicked the can down the road. So, in 1908, King Edward VII had Henry James, Baron James of Hereford, impanel a group of experts to look into the question. And, while they were at it, they might as well look into brandy, rum, and gin, the other important categories of spirit in the British market. They were dealing with the same kinds of issues.

By the end of the 19th century, the spirits industry in the industrialized world was at a crossroads. The distiller’s art was an old one, but it had only been brought to perfection a hundred-odd years earlier with a broad consensus that the way to make a quality spirit was to distill your wash—wine, beer, fermented sugarcane juice, whatever—slowly in copper pot stills, cutting out the “heads” and the “tails” (the first and last parts of the distillate) and then take the resulting “low wines,” put them in another still, cut out the heads and tails again, and sometimes even repeat the process a third time. The resulting spirit, which was usually about 60 or 70 percent alcohol (and never much more than 80 percent) would be appealingly oily in texture and rich in flavor, but it took a lot of labor to make and required considerable aging in oak barrels to get rid of the sharper, more volatile compounds in it and become mellow enough to drink.

Meanwhile, in the 1830s a new technology was introduced to disrupt things. Continuous distillation fed the wash into the top of a tall, copper column and, as it trickled down through a series of perforated plates, pumped live steam through it to strip off the alcohol. The resulting product was as much as 94 percent alcohol—it would take Lord knows how many distillations to achieve that in a pot still—and all you had to do was pump the wash in at the top, pull off the alcohol from a tube in the side and let the spent wash drain out of the bottom. You could keep it running as long as you had wash to pump in.

Being so pure, the spirit from these stills lacked many of the extra compounds that made pot-still spirits so rich in flavor. But that also meant it took a lot less aging, if any at all, to make it palatable; in fact, you could easily make a spirit that would be so neutral in flavor that it would be hard to detect if you mixed it with, say, whiskey, rum or brandy. For a great many distillers this presented a devil’s dilemma: Do you stick with a labor-intensive, top-quality product as made by your grandfather and his father before him and watch your market be eroded year in and year out? Or do you ditch the craft and install a column, saving your market, and try to make the best product you can for the price you can get for it?

That’s the battle that unfolds in the Report—although not actually in the Report itself. The book, you see, is in four parts, of which that is only the first and, at 47 pages, the shortest. It is also, surprisingly, the least interesting. The last part is a 67-page set of indices and digests of the proceedings; most useful. The heart of the book, however, is in the two fat volumes that constitute the “Minutes of Evidence.”

Between March 2, 1908, and May 17, 1909, the Commission sat for a total of 37 days. During those days, Lord James and his seven commissioners—a mix of doctors, lawyers, scientists, and government men—heard the testimony of 116 witnesses. The Minutes of Evidence are that testimony, painstakingly transcribed (along with whatever exhibits the witnesses brought, attached as appendices).

As for those witnesses, they include a good many doctors, lawyers and scientists, to be sure, whose testimony is for the most part ass-achingly dull. But they also include James Dewar, Andrew Jameson, John Talbot Power, and Alexander Walker. If you drink Scotch or Irish whiskey, you have drunk the products of their firms. Cognac-drinkers will recognize James Hennessy, Edward Martell, Andre Hine, and Jacques Delamain.

For gin, the witnesses include Herman Jansen, one of the great names in the history of Dutch genever-distilling, Alfred Gilbey, R. C. W. Currie of Tanqueray Gordon & Co. and Henry Gore Hawker of Coates & Co., makers of Plymouth Gin. For rum, there are Frederick H. D. Man, whose family’s firm supplied all the rum to the Royal Navy and in fact controlled, by his estimate, three-fourths to seven-eighths of the British rum trade, and the very feisty James Nolan, representative of Jamaica’s rum distillers.

Among the other current brands represented are Lucas Bols, Angostura, DeKuyper, Teacher’s, and a whole raft of single-malt Scotches (William Ross, head of the Distillers Co. Limited, which owned a number of them, was a witness).

When these men—and they are all men—testified, they had to describe in detail what they did: what their products were fermented from, how they were distilled, how they were aged, how they were sold and marketed. They had to discuss their commercial philosophies, their visions for the industry, their traditions and innovations. If they declined to take a stand on something, they were pressed. Some of the testimony went on for hours. James Hennessy was on the stand for almost two whole days.

Taken as a whole, the Minutes of Evidence are overwhelming. I have not read them all, or even come close: The testimony covers 573 of those tiny-type, double-column pages—some 850,000 words, by my quick-and-dirty calculation. There is a lot in there that is tedious and little that is truly dramatic. But every time I dip in, whether for a paragraph or a string of witnesses, I learn something. Things like the fact that pure pot-still Irish whiskey, now made exclusively from malted and unmalted barley, used to be made from those two, plus significant percentages of rye and oats and sometimes wheat, or that Dutch distillers added lots of juniper to their genever for some of their export markets (e.g., the United States) and little or none for others (e.g., Great Britain), or that Jamaican distillers made their rum not just from molasses, but rather from that with “dunder,” or spent wash, and the skimming from the process of boiling cane juice down into sugar.

What really makes the book sing for me, though, is the fierce pride of the old-fashioned pot distillers, men who had spent years mastering a complex and exacting craft (pot distillation is easy; good, consistent pot distillation is extremely difficult, as anyone who has tasted a lot of micro-distilled whiskey can attest). James Hennessy, the head of the largest, most prestigious firm in Cognac, with more than a quarter of the market, was able to testify in minute detail to every aspect of his business, not just the marketing, the management, the regulation and taxation of it, the winemaking, the distilling, the aging and the blending. His modern successor could not do that.

When faced with a technology that could turn out incredible volumes of clean, if relatively flavorless, product at a fraction of the cost, small wonder some of these men got truculent. John Talbot Power, for instance, who when asked if, according to him, the column-still stuff had “any of the characteristics of whiskey,” replied “none whatever,” adding that “it would not be accepted by any Irishman as whiskey.” Likewise, the aforementioned James Nolan, who maintains over and over that “only pots still spirits [should] be allowed to be sold as rum,” even if that meant disqualifying everything made in Demerara and the rest of the British West Indies. As for blending, let’s just say that they thought “adulteration” was a more accurate term (that’s how Herman Jansen regarded the incorporation of column still spirit into genever).

Against this, the many column distillers and blenders who testified could only say things like, (and here I’m summarizing), “our product is medically sound”; “it is more efficient to work how we do”; “it lets us make an acceptable product at a good price”; and “we only sell it in the Colonies”—and if not the colonies, in Asia, Africa, or America.

Nowadays, of course, blending is a part of the landscape and in most spirit categories the market has found a way to let column spirits, pot spirits and blends of both coexist, all neatly stratified by price (rum, alas, has not). Even the Irish, the most stubborn holdouts, began offering a blended product in the 1950s, although they still made a little of their pure pot still and single malt whiskey.

But that, it turns out, is what the actual Commissioners’ report suggested: At the end, the definition of whiskey it came up with after hearing all that testimony was “a spirit obtained by distillation from a mash of cereal grains saccharified by the diastase of malt”; Scotch whiskey was simply that, distilled in Scotland, and Irish whiskey that, distilled in Ireland. Pot, column, whatever. In declining to take a stand, it gave us the world of drinks we have today.

But boy, to walk through the John Power distillery with Arthur Talbot Power, or the Hennessy warehouses with James Hennessy must have been something.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/the-greatest-spirits-book-ever-written/