Hello and welcome to Behind the Bar. Today we're having a little look at
all things American Whiskey. So I brought in my resident whiskey expert Fred Siggins
to have a little chat about it.
Rye I feel kind of was a little bit out of vogue for
quite a while but it hat is having a bit of a resurgence now.
In the last 20 years or so, A) people have gotten really interested in classic cocktails and
B) people are just pretty into whiskey these days. Broadly speaking as
we said rye whiskey is just going to be drier and spicier because it's based on
that rye grain. Within that the most obvious thing would then be ryes that
are a very very high rye mash bill so using almost or completely 100% rye
grain and those that just sort of get across the line by using a minimum
amount of rye and then having a lot of corn or other grains in there to soften
them out a bit. So the two examples that we've got in front of us would be
Wild Turkey and Bulleit. So Wild Turkey would be really pretty traditional sort of a
little bit balanced between the rye grains and a significant portion of corn
that's going to be in there as well. Whereas the Bulleit is I believe 95% rye
so it's gonna be particularly dry and spicy (yeah), so again if you're making a
cocktail that's the sort of choice that you have if you really want to push that
heavy rye flavor or if you want something that's gonna be a little bit
softer and sweeter and more sort of balanced out.
And also obviously you know
you kind of want to think about what else is going into the cocktail so for
instance if you're doing a Manhattan and you're doing it with like a lighter
vermouth and you probably want to do it with like your Wild Turkey you're doing
it with a richer heavier vermouth then that will stand up to the Bulleit rather
than getting you know a little bit lost.
Absolutely. So the other ryes that we
have on the table in front of us are Michter's and Sazerac. I really like both of
these products basically just because they're delicious they're well made I
suppose the biggest difference between them and Wild Turkey first of all is
gonna be price point, they're a little bit more expensive a little bit more
sort of premium but what you're gonna get for that
is probably a little bit more complexity maybe a little bit more appropriate as
sipping whiskey's as opposed to just mixing whiskey's and with the Sazerac in
particular you're also gonna see a little bit higher alcohol content this
one's bottled at 45% so again gonna give you a little bit more punch and a little
bit more character if you're sipping on it and also some of that higher alcohol
content that's makes it a little bit easier to work with for cocktails
again if you're after a little bit more of a premium Manhattan those are really
good ones to go with.
The one thing I actually am not sure if any of these do
you have it but that you see on rye bottles quite a lot is "bottled in bond"
what does that mean? Is that an indication of quality like is that
something that you want to be looking for on your on your rye?
Bottled in bond basically means that the whiskey has never left a government bonded warehouse.
So a government agent would actually come around to that warehouse every year
or every month or every six months whatever it was and check and make sure
that all of those barrels were still there and that they actually had seals
over them to prove that nobody had tampered with the barrels, you know added
anything to them or siphoned anything off of them and in the United States if
you say bottled in bond on the label, it also means that it needs to be at least
100 proof or 50 percent alcohol. So there's not that many bottled in bond
American whiskey's available in Australia
Rittenhouse Rye would be sort of obvious example of one so much higher alcohol
content from those ones. (yeah) I hear questions about these different terms
that we see on whiskey labels coming out of the United States all the time things
like straight rye and bottled in bond and to be perfectly honest it's a bit
technical it doesn't necessarily tell you a whole
lot about what's in the whiskey it more these laws are more kind of left over
from a time in history when there was a lot of pretty dodgy whiskey on the
market and so the government tried to create certain laws to help lock that down.
And so that kind of leads me to my next question
what does Straight mean on these labels?
So it is a good question because you
it's something that you see on most American whiskey labels and again it's
one of those things that was sort of left over
from a time when the Americans are really trying to settle on what was a
quality whiskey. Basically to ensure a certain level of quality in the market
and there was this tension during the sort of explosion of whiskey that that
was happening in places like Kentucky and Tennessee around the distillers who
are actually making genuine whiskey and then the sort of rectifiers and blenders
who were taking maybe neutral spirit and flavoring it with caramel coloring and
oak chips and stuff like that and making something-
Sounds delicious.
Yeah I know!
And they were still labeling that as whiskey but the guys who were actually making
the real deal were getting pretty upset about that and saying how are people out
there supposed to know what a genuine whiskey is? So straight means that
something can't be distilled to more than 80% alcohol has to be made with
cereal grains so basically you're still tasting the grains that are actually
going into it and then has to be aged in a new oak barrel for at least two years.
So for all intents and purposes everything that is currently available.
or that is currently made in the United States and labeled as bourbon or rye
is gonna be straight. It's been a long time since anyone was basically
you know making whiskey flavored vodka and trying to flog it off as whiskey.
Now we've obviously covered kind of what is coming out of the United
States the other big one that a lot of people will know is Canadian whiskey
obviously Canadian Club does very well for itself (sure) is there any kind of any
difference there between that and your Bourbons and Ryes?
Yeah absolutely. The big difference is with Canadian whiskey it's still mostly made from corn so
similar to bourbon in that way and different from Scotch whisky or single
malt whiskey because we're not talking about malted barley we're still talking
about a predominantly corn based whiskey. The big difference between Canadian
whiskey and American bourbon is that in Canada they almost always use barrels
that have been used previously as opposed to those brand-new barrels
that the Americans are always using which means that Canadian whiskey is not
going to be anywhere near as intensely oaky as American bourbon and ryes.
It is a little bit funny as well because I think in Canada they can call it a rye whiskey
as long as it has some rye in it, (some rye) it doesn't have it doesn't have to be 51%
so you will see Canadian whiskey that are labeled as rye which are not
particularly rye ish.
Yeah and a lot of Canadians actually refer to their own
native whiskey as rye just as a general way of talking about
whiskey so that can be a little bit confusing and it's good to sort of
understand the difference between American rye which definitely has quite
a high right content and Canadian rye which might not.
Yeah because again if you know if you do like a Canadian rye whiskey you're not necessarily then
gonna like something like Bulleit Rye. (exactly) And then we've got a couple of
little kind of interesting ones on the table here.
In recent years there's also
been a really cool craft whiskey movement developing in the United States and
these guys are producing all sorts of interesting stuff in a range of
different styles and so the example that I've got here is Hudson which was the
first whiskey distillery to open in New York since Prohibition but it was only
really a few years ago that these guys opened up shop and started producing
American whiskeys. They're basically in the Hudson Valley north of New York City
(yeah) so these guys they basically use small casks so they're getting a lot of
oak influence into the whiskey in a relatively short period of time so
generally aging for a little bit less than most people would but this is just
one example of a cool craft whiskey coming out of the United States.
You've got people who are also making single malt whiskey in the u.s. now so kind of
a combination between Scotch and American whiskey because they're making
it with malted barley but still ageing it in those brand-new barrels so getting
that intensity of oaks that you would expect. There's guys like Balcones down
in Southwest, who are using things like
native styles of corn like heirloom corn grains and using mesquite-smoked in
their production processes and stuff like that so there's a lot of really
interesting and fun whiskeys coming out of the United States now outside of the
stuff that you can get from the big commercial distilleries.
Yeah and then
also I guess with the resurgence of whiskey in general you're seeing kind of
like what you were saying I'm making almost a Scottish type whiskey in the
States we've also got American-style whiskeys being made in Australian now.
Yeah absolutely, as part of the whole kind of craft whiskey movement and craft
distilling movement what's happening in Australia right now for the most part
what we do is make Scottish style whiskeys, so single malt whiskies, but
there are some companies that are definitely playing around with
American-style whiskies as well. Limeburners out in Western Australia is a
good example that make both rye and corn based whiskeys and then a brand new one
that's just popped up here in Melbourne is The Gospel, which is a hundred percent
Australian rye whiskey made right over in Brunswick and so this one has just
hit the market because it's made with a hundred percent rye it's got big
beautiful sort of fruit characteristics and a really intense right character
that's very fun and I think people are going to have a lot of fun making
cocktails and just drinking that one so it's cool to see some of these styles
are coming out of the Australian local craft spirits movement as well.
Yeah. Thank you very much for that definitely a pretty comprehensive overview I think
got into a little bit more detail than I did in my previous video hopefully it's
a little bit useful for you guys as well whether you're sort of looking to get
into a American whiskey or whether you already drink it but want to know what
other kind of styles and fun things that are there to try. Let me know in the
comments if you have a favorite or what cocktails you like to use it in as well.