Way to make lemonade out of lemons. I would totally try this. Quote from the article:
…the beer base makes the gin bitter, but in addition to juniper berries, Kiuchi uses sansho peppers, lemons and mikan (Japanese oranges), which helps to “balance out the bitterness” with “citrusy notes.”
I tried both a gin and whiskey made from beer. I didn’t care for the hops flavoring in both. The same distillery makes an outstanding single malt whiskey made from non hopped beer.
Interesting. I would think that the hop flavor would pair well with the added juniper berry flavor. But I like bitter flavors, like a very hoppy IPA.
That’s kind of what I was thinking; you can’t really use leftover beer for whiskey because the hops will come through.
But there’s no reason that hops couldn’t be one of the botanicals in a decent gin. They fit most of the parameters for a good gin botanical- aromatic, a tad bitter, etc…
I like a G & T occasionally… I wonder if any of these recycled gins are available to me in the middle of nowhere?
To a certain extent the same thing has been happening in the UK
j
Legally you can’t do it because you can’t have non grains in you whiskey. Most distilleries are calling the product beer schnapps and I’d say most whiskey distilleries have paired with a local brewery to have at least one combined product line.
I just meant that beer is pretty close to the same thing that malt whiskies use as wash, except for the hops.
And we see flavored whiskey already, even if it’s technically sold as liqueur. So why not just sell it as some kind of hop infused whiskey liqueur?
In order to be called a whiskey you can only have it fermented from grain. Yes, beer is close to malt whiskey but the hops just make a legal difference and put it much closer to genever then whiskey. Flavored whiskey must be whiskey first so they ferment it and distill it and if necessary barrel it (sometimes it just needs to kiss a barrel like it you want a flavored bourbon). Once it is whiskey then you can flavor it to make flavored whiskey but it has to be whiskey first you can also add sugar greater than 2% by volume and turn it into a whiskey liquor.
If you wanted to make a hop flavored whiskey you would first make your malt whiskey and probably put it in a barrel for at least 2 years. Once it was mature enough you’d pull it out (or do it in the barrel) and dry hop it. Then you could bottle it as a hop flavored whiskey but it is a very different process than beer.
They probably ought to add some catch-all categories or relax the regulations a little bit; it feels to me like being unable to add botanicals to the mash or wash of whatever sort of liquor is being distilled is going to stifle creativity.
I mean, you wouldn’t call it “bourbon”, but why couldn’t it be a sort of flavored whiskey/rum/whatever? My suspicion is that if you can’t even sell that sort of product, it’s unlikely anyone’s spent much time seeing how it would work. Which is basically stifled innovation if you ask me.
Now you’re deep in the heart of the craft distilling conundrum how to be innovative but still move product. Back when I owned my distillery I made “rum” from sugar beet molasses and sugar. Legally, this was not rum despite those standing in my distillery not being able to see any part of my process that was different from rum (it tasted damn good too). I had to call it a Beet Spirit on all of my labels and marketing and so on top of having to get consumers to want to buy my rum over all of the other brands I also had to convince them that I was rum. It was a giant pain in the ass just to use locally grown ingredients. Over on the whiskey side a similar argument is going on with quinoa “whiskies”. There is no difference in the distillery in how they are made but legally quinoa can’t be used to make whiskey.
Of course on the other side of the fence the US has some of the most lax regulations regarding vodka in the world. The Ukraine has a three page pamphlet describing what is vodka while the US has two sentences - “'Vodka’ is neutral spirits so distilled, or so treated after distillation with charcoal or other materials, as to be without distinctive character, aroma, taste, or color. It must be distilled to greater than 190 proof”. That actually isn’t true as of May and now the TTB allows for flavor and various treatment and aging mechanisms on vodka but still it is a very lose definition compared to other countries.
Couldn’t you have been a little sneakier with the marketing? Move the space in “Aged Rum” over one letter to the left and call it “Age Drum” Brand Liquor. 
If there is one thing the TTB is anal about its paying your taxes but if there is two it is labeling. Once they decide what a spirit is you have to have the clearly on the label.
