Excellent info. This is the kind of stuff I’m mainly looking for. Looks like our local wine and spirits super store does sell them. I see a Douglas Fir eau-de-vie from Clear Creek that looks really interesting to me and exactly the sort of stuff I look out for. Most of these, though, seem to be special order and not on the shelves right now.
Beer drinker here.
The major breweries didn’t anticipate the growth of hand crafted beers. They kept producing the boring pilsners. They could have created their own.
Thankfully, the hand crafted breweries produced IPA, stouts, ales, etc. And they created a market. If it wasn’t for them, we would still be drinking pilsners.
Then the major breweries bought them out.
Now, they are available everywhere. And we have a choice.
I had it once and thought it was OK, but I didn’t like it enough to displace any of my regular purchases. I don’t recall getting a strong sense of Stranahan’s, but that’s OK 'cause I really don’t care for what I’ve tasted from them since they switched their beer source. Anyway, since Jess Graber says the amount of Stranahan’s they add is “like adding salt and pepper to your meal, it’s just a little bit,” I am imagining an eye dropper.
It’s not like it “displaces” anything. 
I feel naked if there aren’t at least 7 different bourbons and a half-dozen single-malt Scotches in the bar cart at any given time. (Plus about 5 different rums, a couple of armagnacs, a bottle of E&J for my coffee and all the other stuff.)
The price has gone up, but the best deal in bourbon is still Old Weller Antique, which is basically Pappy without the aging.
How much does Pikesville cost where you’re at? I guess we only have one kind here, the 6 year old straight, and that’s $50, not what I call a cheap rye. Rittenhouse is about $28, and Old Overholt is $18, which, to me, is where we’re truly in “cheap” territory.
ETA: Ah, I see now. There’s something called “Pikesville Supreme” that’s in that $20 range. Unfortunately, I’ve never seen it around here. I’d be curious to give it a try.
That’s the only one they make anymore, sadly. I bought a case of the 3 year old, 80 proof version a year ago when they made the announcement that they were discontinuing that version. Guess I’ll have to find a new one when this batch runs out!
Bulliett Rye runs about $26 around here. It’s the backup for the Rittenhouse and is what my favorite bar uses for their Manhattans.
In the bourbon/rye category, I always have…
[ul]
[li]Old Granddad BiB[/li][li]Rittenhouse Rye[/li][li]Four Roses SmB[/li][/ul]
I usually have some combination of…
[ul]
[li]High West Rendezvous[/li][li]High West Campfire[/li][li]Thomas Handy Rye[/li][/ul]
And rounding out the current shelf I have…
[ul]
[li]Van Winkle Family Reserve Rye[/li][li]Black Maple Hill 23 Rye[/li][li]Old Potrero Rye[/li][/ul]
Add to that the several bottles of brandy/Armagnac, liqueurs, gins, scotches, and various other concoctions, yeah, I’m out of room. To boot something out of my cabinet at this point, I really have to like it.
We’re still in the middle of moving, so the list is incomplete. But in the house right now is:
Jim Beam Devil’s Cut (the wife’s favorite)
Tin Cup
Templeton Rye
Evan Williams White Label
Elijah Craig Small Batch (2 bottles)
Wild Turkey 101 (handle)
Pappy 10
4 Roses Small Batch
Bulliett Rye (handle)
Pikesville Rye (6 bottles left in the case)
Rittenhouse Rye (in the freezer)
Plus all the rums and such. Between the garage, the hutch and the bar cart on the patio, we have plenty of room! Party at my place sometime soon!
The Craft distilling market has more challenges than just an uninformed consumer base unfortunately although that is also a huge issue.
There is also an issue with the very very tight controls that the TTB puts on what you can call products. This was mostly due to the bottom end of the market but is really limits what craft producers can make in this country and call something that a consumer will buy.
So you have “vodka” which could be interesting but is actually impossible to produce in a greatly great fashion from a craft distillery due to the rules. Add in that booze really only has four ingredients (Water, ethanol, flavoring and BS) it can lead to some challenges.
As an example “Vodka” by the TTB definition is:
The only real difference between the different brands is the adjuncts which a producer can add without risking that above legal definition or which are left over due to the processes. To be honest if you wanted the “purest vodka” you would just buy Skyy Vodka which is commercially produced ethanol mixed with filtered and deionized water. To make commercial grade ethanol requires a column still where you pull from about the 98th plate while most craft distilleries will have 5 or six at max.
Lots of “craft” producers just buy commercial ethanol and bottle it to make their various products like gin or absinthe. And to be honest if they care about their end product they will as it is far easier to get consistency and quality to do so.
As the vodka market is a non-aged product, it provides immediate cash flow but due to the legal requirements on what can be labeled vodka they cannot do more interesting traditional products.
The Whiskey market will probably be the way forward but it will be harder to maintain consistency and people already think that the 3 megacorp brands are “small batch” when they are typically 1000 gallon huge processes. Heck even Buffalo trace which produces brands like Van Winkle uses a 60,000 US gallon still. Which means that they have 1000’s of barrels to mix to keep their product consistent. They tend to mix around 30 barrels for a batch, which is about 1590 US gallons or 8,000 bottles.
While I do hope that it grows, just to increase the variety and flavors the brutally honest reality is that it is mostly selling a brand.
If you enjoy it that is awesome, but after spending years at the start of the industry I bowed out because I couldn’t sell what was mostly a myth at the scale that is practical in a city.
They are in Evanston, IL, no? Well, I used to live there for a year too!
Yeah, it requires some real self-education to know what the eff is going on.
Heaven Hill seems to be bucking that trend in some ways, but they have a zillion brands. Four Roses is amazing and keeps their own marketing very simple and clean (though they make Bulleit Bourbon for Diageo). Everything else is just confusing and/or scammy.
BH was 40% from the start and therefore a fuckup from the start. “Premium” at the bare minimum ABV? I think not. Oh, and it lost its “8 years old” age statement along the way too. If Beam were smart, they’d make OGD a premium brand in its own right.
Haha. How about Scotch? There are some left with age statements. 
We don’t get much Calvados in the US: French apple brandy that is the real deal and aged. But good stuff is everywhere in Japan.
Yes, I first saw it at Jungle Jim’s in Cincy (and bought a bottle) but am now seeing it on the shelf in ordinary liquor stores in Indy. But we tend to be blessed with everything from Kentucky here, including local liquor chains driving down and buying whole barrels, etc.
Yes, I got one of theirs and would describe it in the same way: an interesting cross between brandy and whisky. The barrel clearly does a lot of the work in that regard.
Another related trend that is new in the last 5 years or so is single malt Scotch being aged or finished in new American Oak, such as the Deanston and Tomatin malts. That produces a malt that feels like a cross between a Scotch and a bourbon. Quite nice, really.
I agree that it’s not good. To me, it tastes “buzzy” (hard to describe, like this buzzy, cloying sweetness). But I also bought Pikesville recently, its older, differently branded sibling from Heaven Hill. And I don’t like that either! Even though Old Overholt (by Jim Beam, for those not in the know) is just 40% ABV and is aged only 3 years, I think it tastes fully aged and quite good. Such are the vagaries of whisky.
There is no problem with many distilleries making spirits. It’s the conceit that craft distilling is somehow of a better quality than the majors because it’s smaller and “craft.” Plus the total BS (often, by no means always) of buying spirit from a giant like MGP and aging it yourself and pretending that it’s “craft.”
Yeah, it’s taking something that should be good and hopeful and turning it into a shit sandwich. Whisky-heads like us may not be fooled if we look closely at the label (and I’ve learned to do so!), but the public is being fooled. Now, usually the stuff isn’t “bad” per se, so my hope is that they are not being turned off of whisky, but it does produce, I dunno what to call it–fucked-up situation.
What are they going to replace that with? If Beam made an older Old Overholt, that would be great. It shouldn’t be anything younger, tho.
Bulleit Rye is MGP rye. It’s a 95% rye mash bill, which sounds like it ought to be good, but I really don’t like it. To me it tastes grassy and lacks the peppery punch of “real” rye. And it’s definitely become a cancer that is in way too many of those “independent” ryes out there.
This is a really good point. The TTB was a blessing for the American whisky market, as it guaranteed a very high-quality product. I really like that, when I drink a straight bourbon whisky, there is no caramel in it to color it and no flavors added. No boise as in cognac to speed up aging/flavoring. But the reality is that most bourbon occupies a fairly narrow band of flavors, for better or worse.
I will add my own personal opinion that vodka, from wherever, is kinda horseshit. It was invented (or perfected) in Russia with the intention of it being utterly pure, free from extraneous flavors. And, you know, it was just Smirnoff and whatever in the US forever, and then Absolut came along in the 80s (correct my history as needed!) with their big ad campaign, and suddenly vodka was supposed to have some sort of flavor to it–but not too much! And most of the time, yeah, it’s just ethanol and water and, as you said, BS.
The point I’d like to make, however, is that the big producers do a damn good job, regardless of the volume they produce. Jim Beam White Label is great whisky. Put that in a horse cart for sale in any time in history, and you’ll walk away with fists full of silver and gold. Heck, sell it anywhere in the US, at any supposed golden age of small distilleries or whatever, and it will taste better than most of what was made at the time. (Not saying you would necessarily disagree–just pointing it out.)
“Craft” or “small batch” only makes a difference if the big guys make bad whisky. But they don’t. In fact, there’s no real way to beat them at their game except to do something slightly different with the mash bill (adjuncts, as you said) and barrels. To some extent, different flavors can be pulled from the still.
What were you doing in the industry?
Has anyone successfully made liquor or beer with cannabis as a central ingredient? With the changing legal landscape, I’d find it hard to believe nobody has tried yet…
Edit: Never mind, just looked it up: Is Marijuana-Infused Alcohol Worth Considering? | Leafly
In the good old days, there were cannabis tinctures sold as medicine. Doing a google image search, I see that they are being made again, for medical marijuana (of course, they were medical back then too…).