For my beverage production experimental learning analysis assignment I choose to visit the Kings County Distillery. The Kings County Distillery is located at 299 Sands street Brooklyn, NY at the Brooklyn Navy Yard building 121. Although The Kings Count Distillery was founded in 2010, The Kings County Distillery is known to be the oldest distillery since Prohibition. On Wednesday may 2nd I visited the Kings County Distillery and was given a tour of the distillery by employee of the name Evan Chyriwski. Evan Chyriwski spoke about the history of the distillery, how did it came about and how do they make their whiskey products. During the tour Evan took us to the fermenting room, to show us where and how the fermenting process of the whiskey begins. He mentioned the main ingredients used to make their whiskeys, the ingredients are Corn and Malted Barley. When beginning the fermenting process the corn and barley is mashed, then fermented off that grain in traditional wood fermenters. Once the fermentation process is completed, it goes in a copper pot still to distill the spirit. After the distilling process happens twice, the newly charred oak barrels are filled with the spirits and aged bourbon for 2 years or more. By having the spirits and aged bourbon filled in a newly charred barrel it helps give the spirit great flavor and quality.
During the tour we went to the tasting room, their tasting room is called the Gatehouse. In the Gatehouse we tasted whiskey that has high concentration of alcohol to whiskeys that had low concentration of alcohol. My favorite whiskey tasted was the whiskey that had the least concentrated alcohol and it was made with honey. They had quite a few products, but their most popular and most known to be the award winning whiskey is the Moonshine. The Moonshine whiskey is a corn based whiskey, Moonshine Whiskey is made from 80% organic corn and 20% barley and Peated Bourbon, which is made with malted barley exposed to peat smoke.
According to an online blog for whiskey beginners written by Sean Lind,”Whiskey is the generic term given to distilled spirits made from grain mash. Bourbon, Rye and Scotch are all types of whiskey; as such they are all similar in taste and appearance. The difference between the types of whiskey depend on the types of grain used, the location in which it was distilled, the length of ageing and the type of casks used in the process”. Which I thought was interesting because in the Gatehouse tasting room we were shown 5 whiskeys that all have their unique taste and it’s all because of, in the Kings County Distillery case caused by the length of aging.
Over all despite of the weather, I had a great experience visiting the Kings County Distillery, the tour host Evan Chyriwski was awesome, very patience and helpful and gave us all the information we needed to know about the distillery.
Reference
http://kingscountydistillery.com/
Barrels for aging process
Gatehouse Tasting
Several people from class decided to write about Kings County. It seems like a interesting place as it is the first distillery in NYC especially hearing about their “boozeum”. I like that you included the quote written by Sean Lind explaining that whiskey is a generic term used for all of their distilled spirits because i had to keep reminding myself that they are all whiskeys but have different names and ingredients. It was especially confusing between the rye whiskey and the moonshine whiskey since they are both made out of rye but one is aged and the other is not. It was great to learn about their Peated Bourbon by reading your post!