Fantasy Time!

[Guest **DONOTDELETE**]

No not that fantasy! -> this one! -> If you could make bourbon any way you wanted how would you do it?

1) What's you fantasy mashbill?

2) Apparatus -> Would you use strictly pot stills or a more conventional column and doubler method.

3) Double or trippple distil?

4) What level of char on your barrels? #2, #3, or #4?

5) Rackhouse -> masonry or 'ironclad'? Urban location or breezy country hilltop?

6) How long would you let it age?

7) Who would you like to do most while waiting? Yeah well I guess it is that kind of fantasty after all! {Was there ever any doubt?}

Linn Spencer

Have Shotglass. Will Travel.

[MurphyDawg]

Allright if I knew what I was doing I would try my mysterious suggested Barleyed Bourbon, though it would probably would tatse like ass, but since this is a fantasy then it would have the yummy chocolate/ coffee undertones that I imagine it would (with a spicy, warming finish).

1) What's you fantasy mashbill?

65% Corn, 25% Chocolate Malt, 10% Rye

2) Apparatus -> pot stills (keep hearing about how they just might impart more flavor)

3) Double or trippple distil? Double

4) What level of char on your barrels? #2, i am very curious about the mashbills flavors coming through so i dont wanna overpower in the barrell

5) Rackhouse -> Masonry On a country Hilltop at the mercy of the weather (rotate the barrells)

6) How long would you let it age? 7 years & 7 days

Well I went First, WHO's NEXT?!?!?!?!?

Tom (<font color=green>out on a limb here</font color=green>) C

[cowdery]

I have thought about this a lot but don't have any radical differences from what is actually done. My main fantasy, as we have discussed before, is a four-grain bourbon, with both wheat and rye used as flavor grains, in something like the following proportions:

rye: 10%

wheat: 15%

corn: 65%

malt: 10%

I would use a low distillation proof, like Wild Turkey, column still and doubler, steel clad country rackhouse, aged as long as it will stand, probably 8 to 10 years, maybe more.

<A target="_blank" HREF=http://cowdery.home.netcom.com>--Chuck Cowdery</A>

[Guest **DONOTDELETE**]

I had intended to go last, but here it is anyway.

I'd like to use a four grain mashbill consisting of; 77% corn, 3% malted barley, 5% malted rye, and 15% buckwheat. Rather than using dried feed corn, I'd use a super sweet hybyrd known as 'Candy Corn' and mash it fresh off the cob.

I would like to trippple distil in copper pot stills manufactured by Vendome Copper & Brassworks. I would like to use a 45% setback to sour the mash in it's true origin.

I would barrel the whiskey in the very special 'alligator char'(about a three & 1/2 char with a special scaled surface) barrels from the Blue Grass cooperage at 111 proof.

Then I would age half of them at one floor above the middle in one of Wild Turkey's 'ironclad' hilltop rickhouses. The other half would be aged in warehouse 'H' (the Blanton's warehouse) at Buffalo Trace.

I would age them 11 years; 11 months, 11 days and 11 hours.

While waiting I would have a lot of fun with the Swedish Bikini Team.

PANTS AWAY!

Linn Spencer

Have Shotglass. Will Travel.<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1>Edited by Linn on Mon Apr 15 15:11:23 2002 (server time).</FONT></P>

[bobbyc]

Depends on what your idea of fun is . That damn swedish bikini team , I have them to thank for some repetitive motion injuries in my right wrist and elbow. I can barely lift a glass of my favorite bourbon thanks to them.

Bobby Cox

[jbutler]

Sorry to hear about your injuries Bobby, and hope they arent debilitating. That's a pretty masculine surname you've got there. Don't have a brother named Lance do you?

Cheers,

Jim Butler

Straightbourbon.com

[MurphyDawg]

nah, Bobby here Manages the Atlanta Braves

TomC

[MurphyDawg]

Reading this old post has gotten my wheels turning and so I have a couple of questions to ask now that I know more about bourbon. (@ the time of this post I was a newbie to the board, only 2 weeks after joining), Anyway.

1) Straight Bourbon has to be the product of one distillery to be called straight bourbon right?? But they dont have to tell the general public where it is from (as in the case of David Sherman bottlings. . . .) Well what about the scenarios like the HH fire. It has been said that other distilleries helped them make product while they were searching out a place to distill. FOR EXAMPLE: say Heaven Hill is distilling a brand called Old Rebuilding, before the mishap. Then unfortunately their distillery is destroyed, and Brown Forman offers to distill Old Rebuilding while they search for new stills. When the BF product comes of age, does this have to be bottled exclusively with the other product that BF made (cause thats my understanding of Straight Bourbon, product of one distillery) or can it be bottled with HH product, due to the extenuating circumstances. Does anyone know??

2) Does the bourbon have to be distilled in the same physical building or just by the same company to meet straight bourbon requirements. I was wonering if Beam can mix bourbons from their Boston & Clermont plants and call it Straight Bourbon. and if it is all distilled in the same place, does it even matter where it is aged??

Okay I have asked enough (i.e. TOO MUCH) for one night,

Thanx in Advance,

Tom (the fact finder) C

[Guest **DONOTDELETE**]

Yes Tom there was some discussion on this awhile back, and I'm fairly certain that Chuck was the person that brought it to our attention. To become bourbon the whiskey must be; made in the U.S.A., at least 51% corn, and aged in new charred white oak barrels for a minimum of 24 months. In order to be labeled 'straight bourbon whiskey' it must all come from the same state.So the bourbon can come from any number of distilleries and aged in any number of warehouses and still be legally labeled 'straight bourbon whiskey'. In most cases each distiller only markets their own brands that they themselves have distilled. Some recent exceptions are Old Fitzgerald and W.L.Weller. Then you have independent bottlers such as David Sherman and Evan Kulsveen.They purchase barrels of bourbon from various distillers. Jullian Van Winkel was an independent bottler, now he's a raconteur.

[cornsqueezins]

I was under the impression that "straight" simply meant that it was not blended with neutral grain spirits, etc.

Not saying you're wrong.....your definition of "straight" is just one that I wasn't aware of.

[boone]

Bingo!-----------Straight bourbon on the bottle means that it is not blended...nothing added...

Bettye Jo

[jbutler]

On item 1 Tom, I think you may be confusing the rules for "straight" bourbon labelling with those of single malt scotch. A Single Malt has to come from one distillery, but as far as bourbon goes, look here http://www.straightbourbon.com/27cfr5.pdf.

You'll need the Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your system, but a good bedtime read regardless

And Linn, before you rag on me for using the "s" word, look into your mind and you can see me making a hand gesture indicating that you're #1

[MurphyDawg]

okay. . . .that makes more sense to me anyway, just been reading a lot recently with the sentence "outdside of being made of only malted barely, bourbon fufills all the requirements of single malt scotch"

so that sentence isnt necessarily true in all cases??

TomC

[MurphyDawg]

not only did that PDF help get me the ansers I wanted, but it cured my insomnia as well! !

TomC

[MurphyDawg]

I knew I read the one distillery thing somewhere. Chuck himself wrote and article Whiskey Basics which was published in his reader (sorry to pick on ya Chuck ) in volume one, also posted on his site here , and in said article he says:

"Straight whiskey is the product of one distillation at one distillery and is fully aged. Bourbon, Tennessee Whiskey and Rye Whiskey are examples of US-made straight whiskeys. A Single Malt Scotch or Single Malt Irish Whiskey is a "straight" too, but they usually don't use that term.".

I just wanted to prove I wasn't delirious when I said that! So, have we all since found out that this is not the case??

Tom ( NOT DELUSIONAL!! LOL ) C

[cowdery]

I admit I was wrong. That statement is wrong. It was learning that which caused me to do more research into Bottled in Bond, which increased my appreciation for Bottled in Bond.

The fact is, most straight whiskey is the product of one distillation at one distillery, but the term "straight" does not require that.

The adoption of the term "straight whiskey" goes back to the Whiskey Wars of the late 19th and early 20th century, when makers of what we now call "straight" whiskey wanted to prohibit makers of rectified whiskey from using the term "whiskey" at all, or require them to call it "imitation whiskey." In fact, that is how the rules were originally written. The preferred term for the good stuff was "pure whiskey" but what we eventually got was "straight" whiskey to describe the "real" product and "blended" whiskey to describe the imitation.

[MurphyDawg]

Thanx man for clearing that up for me once and for all!

Tom (Learning By The Day) C