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Old Tom doesn’t get the same shelf space as gin but maybe that will change with Aviation Gin adding it to their line-up. Sometimes you need the marketing muscle of a celebrity distillery to open a style up.
I have as many oak aged gins now as I do the regular. Now if Aviation would make a Genever, that would be great.
Thanks to my lovely spouse, I got a Blind Barrels tasting for my birthday.
Here are my thoughts on the spirits and how it worked…
First, the first reveal of the four varieties
A. Corsair Triple Smoke American Single Malt Whiskey
B. Broken Barrel Barrel Pick Rye Whiskey
C. RY3 Cask Strength Blended Rye finished in Toasted Barrels
D. Krobar Cask Strength Straight Bourbon Whiskey
Second, my ranking was D nudging slightly ahead of B and C who were tied with A being a very far distant fourth because I am not a fan of smoke in my whiskey. The Krobar had just enough vanilla to it that it balanced out the cask strength. A was only 80 proof while B through D were all between 106 to 120 proof.
And that was my only real issue with this specific box. A was such an outlier that it was either gonna win by a country mile or be dead last. I might have liked all cask strength but maybe have one be have a finish instead of two, one be rye instead of two and have the proof range be 100 to 120. Maybe that is because I prefer teasing out the subtle difference.
But this is a fun way to taste and the reveal is as easy to do with the QR Code. And I know now to look for Krobar spirits.
The bottle of whiskey in the fancy bottle above will set you back $75,000. Why? Because it will be aged in a low altitude orbit above the Earth. The very definition of “space aged”.
But wait, that is not all. You get an NFT, exclusive launch and re-entry parties, a piece of one of the space barrels and a sample bottle so you do not sully the main bottle. If the wooden barrels filled with alcohol do not explode on re-entry, of course.
Part of me wishes that craft beer would bring back the over the moon, wack-a-doodle ideas that cost more than they taste good. Age a beer in a cemetery. Brew a glitter seltzer shandy. Break some rules!
Needed? – Of course not. You can spend that 75k if you want, but you have to spend the same amount on a charity at the same time.
Ice is a cocktail thing but beer is linked via water so I am interested in the new Camper English book, The Ice Book.
I fear that I do a lot of wrong things with ice much like my disregard of proper beer glass etiquette at times. Always good to have people hold one to the mark.
The next cider up from Portland Cider is their Prickly Punch that uses the desert prickly pear.
And not just prickly pear but orange, guava and strawberry. Which flavor will lord over the others? Or will it be a democracy of fruit?
The orange and guava have ceded ground to at first strawberry and then the prickly pear before the cider itself steps in. Thankfully it is not as sweet as I feared it would be. Has a nice bracing mouthfeel to it.
As I found out in my trip to Kentucky, there is a lot and by a lot, I mean a LOT of bourbon out there and finding a favorite is hard especially at some of the bottle price points.
Enter Blind Barrels.
You can get a quarterly subscription or annual. Annual has a price saving. You get four samples of unknown whiskey. You get tasting notes and a QR Code to show who made it as well as a link to buy it if it strikes your fancy.
Thinking about this for my birthday.
The next cider up from Portland Cider is Lemon Drop made with not just regular lemons but the extra fancy Meyer variety.
I was really hoping to get a big ol’ punch of Meyer lemon in this one. I really like lemon flavor but I just did not find it in this cider named after a cocktail. That is not to say that this wasn’t a good tasting cider, just that the name led me to a destination that it just could not arrive at.
I really like the whole community aspect of craft beverages. Maybe because the U.S. seems so easily divided these days so I was very pleased to see that Portland Cider had a Community Cider, using apples and pears from around Portland. To make it even more positive, it’s charity cider too.
CC pours a super light yellow. Nearly shades of seltzer. It has the typical cider aroma of apple and apple skin. Initial taste is bright and sweet. The pear really shines through to add an extra dimension. There is a tiny bit of a spice note but overall, a down the middle cider.
I went big with the first choice of Portland Cider’s appley offerings, straight to an Imperial, with peach tea.
Before I describe it, here is the website description, “A rich, golden imperial cider from crisp Northwest apples and mouthwateringly juicy Washington peaches. Steeped Assam black tea from Steven Smith Teamaker adds an extra zing that puts this cider a notch above the rest.”
To start, for this to be successful, I need to taste an apple base followed by peach tea. A spiced apple flavor is there and I am picking up some tea tannins in the background. Past that though, I am not getting much. It is tasty to drink but, to me, the imperial, the peach and the tea are well hidden. I kinda expect peach to be background but tea should be there.
Good but not firing with all cylinders.
Calwise Spirits is just down Ramada from Firestone Walker and they are releasing a gin finished in DBA barrels. Below is the fascinating journey from idea to finished gin.
“To help create “Old Tom” Big Sur Gin, Firestone Walker generated a mash of traditional brewing grains with a complement of wine grape juice, all fermented with native yeast and bacteria. This base was then distilled by Calwise, imparting a unique imprint into the flavor profile of the original Big Sur Gin.
Then, in the established Big Sur Gin fashion, Bergh infused the gin with organic wild herbs that are largely native to California’s iconic Big Sur coastline, including white sage, yerba santa, bay, fennel and elderberry as well as the essential juniper.
“We also enhanced the traditional recipe by including botanicals such as coriander and orange peel, which were suggested by Brewmaster Matt Brynildson,” Bergh said. “We added rose petal as an ode to David Walker’s British roots.”
Bergh worked with Brynildson, Sensory Research Analyst Craig Thomas and the Firestone Walker brewing team to create the mash, acquire the right barrels and guide both versions of Old Tom Big Sur Gin to fruition.
The resulting gins provide both common and contrasting qualities. The main version of “Old Tom” Big Sur gin is fragrant and elegant, while the version matured in DBA barrels has a richer, almost whiskey-like color and taste. “