8/14/2019 Bourbon: corny, delectable and a toast to the French.

1/3

eer and whiskey have a lot in common.Both start with the malting o grain,

which simply means that grain is soaked

in enough water, or a long enough time, or

the seed to assume that it is nally ullling its

evolutionary reason to exist. A bud is hastened

out in an attempt to sprout orth rom a hopeully

nutrient-rich soil. At this very moment, the

expectant grain is heavily endowed with a useul

content o enzymes, or both growth, and, as it

B

All-AmericanWhiskey

By Keith Hofman

Boubon: cony, dctaband a toast to th Fnch.

it in a bath o hot water. Lie is over, but theun has just begun.

I its beer you want, one generally: 1) keeps

that soup on the kettle, 2) adds some yeast (which

converts much o the sugar content into ethanol),

3) soaks some fowers in it (hops) and, 4) does

some ltering. I its whisky you desire, you simply

dont use the hops, and once youre done ltering,

you boil the swi ll over and over to collect and

ampliy the alcohol content.

Seems the Scots like to denote their distilled

beer with just a y, while the Ir ish and

Americans preer ey. hat is all t here

is to that mystery.

ennessee whiskey is just l ike Bourbon

except, prior to barrel aging, the precious

liquid is ever so slowly leeched throughover three metres o charcoal derived

rom maple trees. his Lincoln County

Process is responsible or the mellowing

and sweeter undertones o brands like

Jack Daniels and Gorge Dickle. Charcoal

is quite good at latching on to impurities

and, so the theory goes, produces a purer,

more drinkable product. I you live in

ennessee you swear by such. I you live

Whisky, Whiskey andtennessee vs. kentucky

The delicious taste of Bourbon agesmuch faster than Scotch, needing onlyto be barrelled for four to eight years.

8/14/2019 Bourbon: corny, delectable and a toast to the French.

2/3

burnt taste. In Ireland, one can use either malted

or unmalted grain, but the curing technique

doesnt include peaty smokeits accomplished

with direct heat.

For bourbon, the rules are a bit dierent.

rue, bourbon uses malt in the same ashion as

Scotch and Irish whiskey, but malt only makesup about 15 percent o the used grain. By law,

51 percent o the content that goes into the brew

soup has to be corn (most modern eorts use

about 70 percent), the rest is rye and/or wheat

and that malted grain (again, or those enzymes).

No peat res are used. Corn imparts the resultant

whiskey with a round mouth eel and a sweet

taste. Interestingly, the dierent grains used in

The infamous Bourbon Street in New Orleans. Certainly not as smooth and easy going as the name suggests.

akin to sourdough bread making. Te sour-

mash process (noted proudly on most bottles

o bourbon) involves taking some spent

leover mush rom an earlier production run

and unceremoniously dumping it into a nice

new soup o reshly milled grain. Te spent stu

is devoid o alcohol and acidic in nature, andthereore sour in favour, hence the name. Some

modern day bourbons start a new batch with up

to 25 percent sour mash.

The name is BourBon

In the 1700s, Bourbon, the French Royal House,

assisted the budding and appreciative US o A in

their ght against t he British or independence.

Barrel roles

Bourbon is always aged in resh American

white oak barrels. Te barrels, however, are

charred deeply at the cooperage beore any

liquid is allowed to rest in them. Te char

produces some o the same eects as seen

with charcoal ltering in ennessee whiskey,

but the long soak or bourbon also adds

multiple favour and colouring chemicals.

Aer our to eight years, the barrels areemptied and shipped o to the UK as

Scotch and Irish whiskies are oen aged in

themsometimes or decades more.

Te oak is what gives whiskeys t heir

colour, and a lot o their taste. In all barrel

aging the process is the samein warm

seasons the liquid expands and orces some

o itsel into the meat o the wood where

Bourbons sour mash method is a proud tradition.

Better than it looks: The sour-mash process uses mushy leftovers from previous production batches.

8/14/2019 Bourbon: corny, delectable and a toast to the French.

3/3

Finally, bourbon ages in barrels at a much

aster rate than Scotch. Scotch believers drool,

mysel included, over whisky that has been

resting in a dingy barrel or 15 years or more.

For bourbon, the goodness gained rom a barrel

terminates in less than a decade. Tereore, most

bourbon is barrel aged or our to eight years.

Next time you raise a glass o bourbon

be sure to toast the American rontier spirit,

thank the rst cheapskate who decided to recycle

the sour mash, and salute the tastes, colours

and smells imparted by an extended soak

in charred oak.

naming honour bestowed on the members o

the House o Bourbon could have created such a

powerul legacy. Te French dont seem to know

it, but the enduring muscle o the Bourbon name

comes directly rom the amenability o corn to

the art o distillation.

No one describes how the name Bourbon

became synonymous with American whiskey any

better than the true bourbonophile that is CharlesK Cowdery. He writes: When American pioneers

pushed west o the Allegheny Mountains ollowing

the Revolution, the rst counties they ounded

covered vast regions. One o these original, huge

counties was Bourbon, established in 1785 and

named aer the French royal amily. While this

vast county was being carved into many smaller

ones, early in the 19th century, many people

continued to call the region Old Bourbon. Located

within Old Bourbon was the principal Ohio River

port rom which whiskey and other products were

shipped to market. Old Bourbon was stenciled

on the barrels to indicate their port o origin. Old

Bourbon whiskey was diferent because it was the

rst corn whiskey most people had ever tasted, and

they liked it. In time, bourbon became the name

or any corn-based whiskey.

The steamers that cruised on OldMan River (thats the Mississippi)

always had a stash of Bourbon.

Dont be ooled by all the marketing g ibberish

o oldest registered distillery, same recipe

since the 1700s, handed down across a

17-and-one-hal generations nonsense.

Te bourbon o the late 1700s was nothinglike it is today. For one, the early bourbons

were made in pot, not column stills, like has

been practiced or the last 160 years or so.

Second, the sour mash technique was not

yet invented, which meant the lot-to-lot

variability was quite high, and the product

inconsistent at best. Tirdly, it was likely not

until about the 1840s that the charring o the

inside o the oak barrels was introduced, and

this innovation alone produces a dramatically

diferent taste and colour experience. In

short, the result o some marketing ocus

group must have indicated that the old

recipe claptrap would sell more bottles,

so we are stuck with countless reerences

to such. You now know better.

old recipe silliness

Anglo-Franco relations in LA: something to celebrate.