«
»

Winter Ethanol Policy

(title borrowed from here)

Another half-year, another brew. Jess has recently acquired a taste for the hoppier brews, so I may be brewing some more IPAs in the near future.

In the meantime, more Rye and old-fashioneds should keep the cold away. In addition to the old reliable Old Overholt, I’ve added two interesting Ryes to my collection. The first is Russell’s Reserve Rye, which I finally saw locally. I’d tasted it in San Francisco, and was blown away by its spiciness — it finishes like a chili pepper vodka — and snapped it up as soon as I saw it. The second is Templeton Rye, from a small distillery in Iowa. This is now one of my favorites. It has the most Rye character of any rye I’ve had recently, but is unfortunately only distributed in Iowa and Illinois :-( .

With the slowly-increasing variety of Rye and the amazing variety of good affordable Bourbons, I haven’t perused the Scotches for quite a while. The American whiskey market is starting to become as varied and interesting as the American beer market a decade or so ago. This is a good thing(tm).

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 7th, 2008 at 11:39 pm and is filed under Brewing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

5 Responses to “Winter Ethanol Policy”

  1. wjc Says:
    December 8th, 2008 at 11:57 pm

    Merkin? is that for the filtering or something?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkin

  2. chris Says:
    December 9th, 2008 at 8:23 am

    Darn, it was supposed to be my “secret ingredient”, dry-hopped (dry-haired?) for that extra special flavor. And it’d keep me from entering it into contests, unless I wanted to be evil to the “specialty beer” judges (oh, the horrors they “evaluate” sometimes…. Fermented Mountain Dew? Seriously!)

    Actually, I had just found “The Atomic Cafe” on google video (unwatchably bad recording, unfortunately, I may have to track down a better copy), and was in a cold war dark comedy mood, so I named the beer after Peter Seller’s “president” character in Dr. Strangelove.

  3. wjc Says:
    December 9th, 2008 at 2:58 pm

    Ah, of course, I’d forgotten about Dr. Strangelove.

    A while back, a friend told me about a batch of Surly that had been ‘teabagged’ with extra hops. I know what he meant, but that description also created some bad imagery over the brew kettle…

  4. chris Says:
    December 9th, 2008 at 6:29 pm

    teabagged…

    Ah, Eek! (NSFW)

  5. Templeton Rye Says:
    December 23rd, 2008 at 1:51 pm

    We are always excited when someone new tries our rye, and we are glad that you enjoyed it. Yes, currently TR is only distributed in Iowa and Illinois, but we have expansion plans for 13 states within the next two years, so stay tuned.

    Also, you can always purchase a bottle online through Binny’s:
    http://www.binnys.com/spirits/Templeton_Small_Batch_Rye_196001.html

    Thanks, and happy holidays!

    - The team at Templeton Rye