FIRST WHISKEY BARREL RELEASE
Erica Sagon
We are bottling our first ever barrel of whiskey this week, and will release it on Saturday, Dec. 5, which happens to be Repeal Day, the date Prohibition ended. What timing!
This is a single malt whiskey, made from 100 percent malted barley from Sugar Creek Malt Co. in Lebanon, Ind. As far as we know, this is the very first craft single malt whiskey in Indiana.
We are thrilled to be able to share this whiskey with you before the end of this year, our first year of business. A distillery only releases its first barrel once, you know. So if you're interested in purchasing a bottle (375ml for $30) please RSVP and come early.
Emptying the whiskey barrel into the tank in preparation for bottling.
5 things you should know about our whiskey:
1. WE ARE RELEASING JUST ONE (1) BARREL. There are roughly 53 gallons of whiskey in that barrel.
2. IT TASTES TOASTY, MALTY, SPICY. And there's definitely some welcome sweetness to it, which comes from the way we distill it. Our house flavor, if you will. Its home for the better part of this year was a charred American oak barrel — traditionally used for bourbon, but we used it for our single malt whiskey.
3. OUR WHISKEY WAS AGED ON SITE AT THE DISTILLERY. When you take a tour, we'll show you the other barrels that are waiting for their big day to come.
4. WE DIDN'T ADD ANY COLOR TO THIS WHISKEY. Did you know that some distilleries add caramel coloring to their spirits to make them look more mature? What's that all about? We're not even going there. Ours went straight from the barrel to the bottle without any tinkering.
5. WE WEREN'T PLANNING TO RELEASE WHISKEY THIS SOON, but you tasted it and told us to do it. We offered samples of what we had aging to whiskey drinkers who we know have good taste, and over and over again, we heard, "It's ready to go." And here we are.
Jason, Doug, Jeff, Adam, Justin and Rob. Happy faces after a couple of stressful minutes of emptying the whiskey barrel.