Better to distil in the winter?

[nor02lei]

At my visit to the Willet distillery Drew Kulsween told me that he was completely certain that spirit distilled in the winter did develop to a better whiskey when maturation was completed than spirit distilled in any other season. Main reason was better quality of the grain, as I understood.

When I did tour Barton’s the day after I asked Ken Pierce about this issue. He said that the whiskey did turn out the same from all seasons.

A bit of a similar thing happened at G Dickel. The guide did claim that they only used maple cut in the winter for the Lincon county process due to the fact that there are more sugar in the wood in wintertime.

As usual I am grateful for comments and viewpoints.

Leif

[Gillman]

Dickel chills its charcoal leaching vats to achieve a uniform cold temperature year round; Jack Daniels does not do this.

Personally, I think the lore of better whiskey from winter production (or Fall, technically) derives from empirical knowledge gained early on. Ferments in cold weather resulted in better spirit without undue estery or other unwanted tastes resulting from high fermentation temperatures or the effects of wild yeast getting in. Beer brewers have known this since time immemorial.

True, this does not account for why Dickel would chill the leaching vats and not its fermenters, but maybe it does that too.

Gary

[cowdery]

Today it's no big deal to manage the temperature of process water, even in very warm weather. That was really the only impediment to year-round distilling. As for the product produced in the colder months being "better," about all I can credit that to is production in hot weather being marginal, whereas it's very easy to achieve the right temperatures in cool weather. I can't imagine it being relevant to anything except fermentation, which produces heat and can get too hot if not managed. "Too hot" just means "too fast." I'm not sure why that's bad, but it is. Perhaps condensation is also impacted, but I doubt it.

I have heard some distillers express preference for Spring distillation, because it immediately gets a summer of aging. Although the age of a whiskey is stated in years, distillers think in terms of how many summers it has been through.