Can Aged Whiskey be De-Colored and Deodorised?

[bourbonv]

Gary,
Frost 8/80. The product Brown-Forman would like to forget. In order to make a "lite whiskey" they filtered all of the color out of some of their whiskey. A huge flop in the market.

Mike Veach

[Gillman]

I never heard of that product, Mike, when did that come out? I can't recall that any has surfaced on "dusty shelves" forays. We have seen some Light Whiskey out there (I tasted some last year at a Gazebo). It was different than Canadian or any other whiskey, but that one was light amber. Sounds like this Frost one was bleached completely by the filtration process.

Subsidiary thought: since most whiskey undergoes a, activated charcoal filtration before bottling, I wonder why it doesn't lose color, it must have to do with the intensity of the process.

Gary

[bourbonv]

Gary,
The product dates from the late 1970's and Brown-Forman ended up recalling most of it from the stores and turning it into fuel additives. It sold that well! I have seen a few bottles in my time, but I have never tasted it.

Mike Veach

[cowdery]

During my time working with Brown-Forman, Frost 8/80 was spoken about in hushed tones, its name a synonym for "career-ending failure."

[OneCubeOnly]

Here's a picture of a mini--it's scary to think this concoction actually started out as bourbon!

Has anybody actually tasted this stuff!?

[OneCubeOnly]

Here's another picture of Frost 8/80 that I swiped off eBay. It says "Distilled in Pennsylvania" !?!?

[CrispyCritter]

I just punched "Frost 8/80" into Google, and got this article from 1971 about the "light whiskey" phenomenon.

Wow, "career-ending failure" is an understatement - a "billion-dollar gamble" in 1971 dollars is really a hell of a lot of money.

[TimmyBoston]

This is a variation on the topic, but a few months ago I saw an episode of Mythbusters on the Discovery Channel. They were testing to see if filtration could turn cheap gut rot vodka into high end vodka.
They took a generic vodka one of the ones that makes paint thinner look good and tested it against a bottle that appeared to be Grey Goose. They ran through cheap vodka through a water filter, something like a Brita Pitcher a number of times and it got considerably better, but not quite up to the standard of the Goose. I found it very interesting that the vodka could improve that much, but they also said that the vodka was much harder on the filter than tap water so with the cost of filters, the top shelf is much cheaper than filtered gut rot.

[TimmyBoston]

Also I was wondering if anyone here has tasted the Frost 8/80? I wonder if it even tastes like whiskey?

[Edward_call_me_Ed]

This thread has got me thinking...

Take some of the cheap stuff, filter it till it is as near clear as you can manage, {if not white dog, then yellow dog ;-)!} fill a new, charred oak keg with the results and see what happens.

Ed