Distillers Festival at Portland Center Stage. All photo’s courtesy of Ian Goodrich
Owww. My liver hurts. Over the past three days I may have mixed more alcohol than W.C. Fields on a good day. Through bleary eyes, the disastrous loss of a family heirloom and a good deal of free cocktails, I have managed to make it to Monday. I certainly learned more than I bargained for and met some great people who are very excited about booze. Props to Rogue and the folks at the Oregon Bartenders Guild for putting together a fine event.
Last night’s after party at 50 Plates
Read my rundown of the event after the jump!
On the base grain alcohol controversy: let me clear up any confusion you might have. In any alcohol distillation process (except when making rum) the first step always begins with making grain alcohol (or base spirit). The base spirit is then filtered, distilled, and flavored to create whatever it is you want as the end result. Some distillers choose to make their own base grain alcohol. This is an expensive and lengthy process. The initial grain (corn, barley, rye, et al.) is milled, cooked with water to create a mash that is mixed with barely malt, creating grain sugar. The grain sugar is then mixed with yeast that turns the concoction into carbon dioxide and grain alcohol—whew (keep in mind, this is a nutshell explanation).
Many distillers have decided to eschew the cost and trouble of making their own base spirit by importing a neutral grain alcohol, which they then distill. The argument here is that if you do not have your hand in the process from beginning to end, you don’t have enough control over your product. The idea being that not all base grain alcohols are created equal. Or rather, imported base grain alcohols are too equal to create a truly “craft” product.
On Saturday night I ran into Lee Medoyeff from House Spirits. Because he’s heading one of the leading Portland craft distilleries that doesn’t create its own base grain alcohol, I gave him a chance to answer the criticism of some out-of-town distillers at the festival. He didn’t pull any punches.
“It’s a petty argument,” he responded, “In the end it all comes down to the taste of the finished product and what you enjoy.”
Granted, this is the abbreviated version of what was a detailed and heartfelt diatribe that included: the high cost of base spirit creation, the odd way Chopin vodka is distilled in Europe (not from its own base spirit, he assured me), and finally the art of filtering and flavoring to create what he still feels is a “craft” product.
Is it an issue? I’m not sure. I’d agree that it comes down to what a consumer likes best. But sometimes what a consumer likes is not just the taste of the alcohol, but the story behind it. So, regardless of taste, some might choose a vodka from a distillery like Portland’s Artisan Spirits over House Spirit’s Medoyeff vodka, simply because Artisan is creating its own base spirit.
And what about taste? In my thorough sampling of all the products at the Distillers Festival, I can honestly say that all of the spirits that I sampled were unique. The homemade base spirit did not seem to correlate with whether or not I found the booze enjoyable.
Other News from the Festival:
MacBain accepts his giant check
Jamie MacBain from Park Kitchen took top honors, and $1000, in the mixologist contest with his Bluecoat Gin, LOFT tangerine cello, Manzanita sherry and orange bitters concoction.
Rogue Spirits will soon be releasing a pink gin, aged in wine barrels. It’s quite nice, actually—the wine and wood depth mellowing the spruce and cucumber tones of their current gin.
Look for Cascade Peak Spirits from Ashland, to release an organic rye whiskey early next year. I tried a bit of this stuff before the bottle was tragically broken during the Friday night distillery tour. It was tremendous rye on the nose and a bit spicy in the finish. I was surprised at how smooth it was, considering it was quite young at 6 months. Hopefully, by the time the rye is released, they will have started to distribute to Portland liquor stores. Right now you need to go south if you want to get a bottle of their lovely Organic Nation gin or vodka.
On that note, Oregon will soon be flooded with whiskey. Well, in about four years or so, anyway. Almost every Portland distiller I talked to is working on a whiskey. I vote we change the name of the Willamette to Whiskey River in commemoration of this exciting prospect.
Look for an interview with cocktail historian and home mixologist Robert Hess here on Blogtown in the next couple of days. Hess, who is one of the founders of the Museum of the American Cocktail in New Orleans, gave me a bit of his personal history as well as some essential tips on setting up your own home bar.
And Finally!
Best Quote from the Festival:
“Never give Sweet Lucy to a woman you don’t want to see naked.”
-distiller Phil Prichard, on the amazing powers of his Sweet Lucy liqueur
Now, before it jumps from my body and beats the hell out of me, I’m going to go nurse my liver… Down Boy!
not to worry, it looks like WSH has your gran pappy’s hand sanitizer
The base spirits thing is a bit misleading. Clear Creek, who mysteriously weren’t at the festival, ferment almost all of their various spirits from fruit mash. All grappas are made from pomace, the stems and skins left over after grapes are pressed for wine. Brandy is distilled from wine, though I don’t think anyone’s making it in Portland yet. Only grain-based spirits–only a portion of the world’s traditional boozes–can be properly made from base spirits.
What does it mean for a vodka like House Spirit’s Medoyeff vodka to be made from purchased base spirits. I mean isn’t vodka grain neutral spirit already, so Is House Spirit anything more than a packaging and marketing company? That’s like waving the vermouth bottle over the gin to make a super-dry martini, isn’t it?
Excellent comment, boozenerd! As I said, it was a nutshell explanation, but you added a bunch of good info. I added the exception for rum, but missed the grappa etc. McMenamins is actually making brandy, but they only sell it out of a couple of their pubs… Edgefield, and another one I can’t remember right now.
Since you are a self confessed booze nerd, I’d love to know your opinion on this issue. Do you think a house-made grain spirit makes a better product?
“I don’t drink water because fish fuck in it.”
— W. C. Fields
@ confused
I don’t presume to speak for Lee Medoyeff, but I think he’d probably say the magic in his vodka comes from the post distillation filtering of the neutral grain spirit he’s working with. He runs it through limestone and charcoal after it comes out of the still.
From what I understand, base grain spirit still has a whole bunch of impurities that need to be taken out of it. You would not want to drink straight base grain spirits.
Thanks. I was under the mistaken notion that all these micro-distilleries had little pot stills – as boozenerd notes, Clear Creek’s eau-de-vie leads the way and for me anyway is the standard by which I judge the others – and to learn that they are operating more like a negociant (though that “still” isn’t exactly right) than a winery or brewery is a minor revelation. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised. Thanks for the commentary & clarification.
With this much confusion regarding something as fundamental as “base spirits”, regardless of your preferences, you have to say the Distillers Festival and by extension the Oregon Bartenders Guild missed the mark. At least part of the stated mission was to educate. “Base spirit” is an industrial commodity, as close as you can get to 100% alcohol [think Everclear]. They sell it in 55 gallon drums. Despite the all the hocus pocus about filtering, multiple distillations, organic blah blah blah, what these”distillers” are doing is infusing or modifying the base spirits and then re distilling, packaging and marketing it as an “artisanal spirit”. Now there is nothing wrong with this approach, it’s the way many modern and older spirits are made, but it’s not the same as producing your own mash and running it through your still. The distinction is important since the real alchemy of artisanal spirits happens inside the still and no amount re-engineering can reproduce that. Whether it matters to the casual drinker, who can say, after all by the time you create that mega Bloody Mary its not going to matter how the alcohol was produced.