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Bourbon is German, Really


Gillman
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He probably got it from Wikipedia. Everybody knows you can trust Wiki!

 

They had Wiki back then, right???

 

:D

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1 hour ago, tanstaafl2 said:

He probably got it from Wikipedia. Everybody knows you can trust Wiki!

 

They had Wiki back then, right???

 

:D

 

I dunno, I'll do a search in the digitized papers and let you know. :)

 

Gary

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5 hours ago, Gillman said:

Bourbon is German-American in origin via Pennsylvania rye whiskey.

They were a florid, ponderous, stalwart and manly race.........

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7 hours ago, flahute said:

^^^^ I love how they wrote back then.

 

Yes, it's always a mix of old and new. Some of it fits in easily today, e.g. to flatboat it, that's a typical Americanism (a noun into a verb). By the way Brackenridge was a lawyer and author, he supported the whiskey rebels but later acted as a mediator to try to resolve the matter with the government. For a time he was on the government's hit list though. He wrote a book, the Chivalry book mentioned, which is the first novel of the frontier.

 

Also when Williams said the distillers lighted out of Pennsylvania, we still talk that way today.

 

Gary

Edited by Gillman
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Hhhhhmmm.  Wasn't there some German immigrant guy named Boehm who had some influence on bourbon-making?  I have no idea where I heard that, but . . .

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I think the final line in your reprint of the article is incorrect. Looking at the .pdf you linked, I think the final line should say "process" instead of "progress." The complete line should read "Such is the origin of Bourbon whisky, which owes its reputation to the same honest process which made Old Monongahela famous in its day." 

 

I wonder what this line says about the origins of the use of new charred oak barrels which you previously posted about?  Maybe charring barrels is somehow related to Old Monogahela or maybe charring barrels had not yet become a required element of bourbon production.  

Edited by jsrudd
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13 hours ago, jsrudd said:

I think the final line in your reprint of the article is incorrect. Looking at the .pdf you linked, I think the final line should say "process" instead of "progress." The complete line should read "Such is the origin of Bourbon whisky, which owes its reputation to the same honest process which made Old Monongahela famous in its day." 

 

I wonder what this line says about the origins of the use of new charred oak barrels which you previously posted about?  Maybe charring barrels is somehow related to Old Monogahela or maybe charring barrels had not yet become a required element of bourbon production.  

 

Yes, thanks for the spot, I'll fix it.

 

I was thinking about the charred barrel too. Charred barrels have been as traditional for rye as for bourbon. For aged Tennessee whiskey ("red whiskey"), too.

 

Given the 1700s experiements with charred barrels, given that people like Harrison Hall (1818) and Samuel M'Harry (1809), both writing in PA, referred to charring vessels used to make whiskey (although not quite in the way that later developed), I think it is reasonable that we not associate the charred barrel with Kentucky in the sense of Kentucky having come first. I think as I said in my notes, packhorses carrying Monongahela whiskey out of western PA would have caused a kind of aging just as flatboats did. Just the trip to Limestone (Maysville) Ky from PA would have shown that and some of the emigrating farmers would have brought some whiskey with them. 

 

I think probably whiskey was always old and new in PA, KY and TN. Earlier, I did suggest that old whiskey from Kentucky, i.e., aged in charred barrels, influenced TN to do the same. It's just a thought, because whiskey production was always more widespread in Kentucky both on farms and commercially. My sense is (speculation), whiskey in TN was closer to the hills, to moonshine whiskey. Seeing in the 1800s how good KY bourbon was, I think it must have impelled people like Jack Daniel and the Green Briar Distillery to age their product similarly.  This is especially so because while the lower part of Kentucky and TN used the charcoal leaching method, the rest of KY didn't.

 

But aged Mononghahela, very likely in charred wood, probably did precede Kentucky,'s, yes.

 

Gary

Edited by Gillman
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