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Do Brewers Make The Best Distillers?

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  • iStill
    replied
    Based on my extended experience in working in the craft distilling industry ... and with a sizable number of brewers as customers, I'd say it is both "yes" and "no". Yes, over 80% of flavors (depending on still design) are made during fermentation. But brewers brew with beer in mind. Hops play an important role and so do dextrines. Both play no role in making a base whiskey beer. Dextrines don't come over in distillation. Hops have no place in whiskey (sometimes a bit in gin though). Also brewers work very clean and with relatively low fermentation temps and medium pH levels. In general, the brewers that come to it from a consumers beer perspective make - again in general - relatively one-dimensional whiskies. If there are Q's out there on how to improve this, fire away. Here to help brewers that want to become distillers.
    Last edited by iStill; 12-03-2020, 08:01 AM. Reason: Left out some words, ammended that

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  • banjo
    started a topic Do Brewers Make The Best Distillers?

    Do Brewers Make The Best Distillers?

    Yes, another city may be in the company’s name, but a sizable chunk of Boston Beer Company’s beer is brewed in Cincinnati. It’s the hometown of Jim Koch, the craft beer pioneer’s always-smiling founder, and since 1994, many Samuel Adams beers have been produced in the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood, about three miles north of the Ohio River.

    Drive southeast on West Liberty Street and down I-471 until you cross the Daniel Carter Beard Bridge, and less than 10 minutes later you’ll be in northern Kentucky — specifically, the town of Newport. There stands New Riff, one of the best craft whiskey makers in the business, which, oddly enough, employs a former Boston Beer Co. brewer as its head distiller.

    “I know distilling looks like the sexy thing,” says Brian Sprance, who has held the position since New Riff was founded in 2014. “But all you are doing is magnifying all the flavors you created in fermentation.”

    Other craft breweries seem to be catching on. Rather than strictly recruiting people with distilling experience, they’re bucking industry traditions by turning breweries — especially the Cincinnati outpost of Sam Adams — into a bit of a trade school for future whiskey makers.

    Read the rest here
    Some craft whiskey distilleries are turning breweries — especially the Cincinnati outpost of Sam Adams — into trade schools for future whiskey makers.
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