DIY Spirit Aroma Kit

Last year the Commonwealth Club of California hosted a panel discussions entitled “Distilled in the Bay Area: How to Drink Like a Locavore.” During the Q&A, one question that seemed to be on the minds of many in the audience was, how to improve one's ability to detect and describe the aromas present in spirits? The panel of distillers offered a few suggestions. Their primary suggestion, which I've heard before, was to hold a tasting with some friends. At the tasting you pick a couple spirits of the same type (i.e. gin, bourbon, scotch, rum) and as you smell and drink them you talk with your friends about the aromas and flavors you are noticing. It is helpful to do this in a group because not only will different people notice different things but they may also use different words to describe whats in the glass. I can say from my own experience these types of events are very helpful. Numerous times I have had an experience where I have been stuck trying to describe an aroma and a friend offers their suggestion which perfectly describes the sensation.

The second suggestion the panel offered to improve one's ability to recognize aromas was to practice with an aroma kit. An aroma kit is a collection of small vials that contain aromatics that match the name on the label. For instance vials labeled oak, green apple, black cherry, clove, smell like their name. The purpose of these are to practice associating the smell of an aroma with its name so that when you come across a similar aromas in spirits you can identify them. However, the only commercially available aroma kits I was able to find were geared towards red wine drinkers and very expensive. I was primarily interested in aromas found in spirits and I not that keen to spend hundreds of dollars on a kit that some reviewers complained came with vials that didn't smell at all.

I was almost ready to give up on the idea when my brain connected a conversation I had with a friend about herbal tinctures with my homemade vanilla extract. A number of years ago some friends gave me a vanilla extract kit for Christmas. The kit consisted of a 4oz bottle three whole vanilla beans and a bottle of vodka. To make the vanilla extract I slit the beans, placed them in the bottle, filled it with vodka and let it sit in the cupboard. Since alcohol is a solvent the vodka dissolves a little of the vanilla bean infusing it with its flavor and aroma. Tinctures are similar in that they use alcohol to extract healthful properties from various herbs. I put these together and I thought maybe I could make my own spirits aroma kit.

To do this I bought some 2oz amber glass bottles with the plan to fill them with various herbs, spices, other aromatics common to spirits and 40% vodka and see what happens. Future posts in this series will show my process, the results and hopefully prove to be a low-cost alternative to buying a commercial aroma kit.

Update: Read about making my first batch of spirit aromas.

Whiskey vs Whisky: Etymology

 In the first Whiskey vs Whisky article I mentioned that there are a few explanations for why whisk(e)y has two spellings. Masters of Malt claims that in the 1870s American and Irish Whiskey distilleries adopted the spelling with the e as a means to differentiate themselves from the lower quality whisky coming out of Scotland at that time. This seems like a simple statement that should be easy to test, but like many things, the details are significantly more complicated.

My first thought was to look at the etymology.  According to Douglas Harper of the Online Etymology Dictionary the word whisky showed up in the early 1700s as a Gaelic translation of the Latin term aqua vitae or water of life. The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, has a short entry that lists both whisky and whiskey but it does not include any years or explain why there are two spellings. The Chambers Dictionary of Etymology, has the longest and most detailed entry about the historical development of the word whisk(e)y. It says that from 1583 to 1730 there were at least seven different anglicized versions of the Gaelic word uisge beatha “water of life,” that referred to grain spirits. In 1746 whisky made its first appearance in writing with whiskey following seven years later in 1753. After this no new spellings develop which is probably due to the fact that the first dictionaries were being published around this time. So Chambers offers a simple answer to why whisk(e)y has two spellings; when the word developed it was common to find alternate English spellings for the same thing.  However, this does not tell us when each spelling came to be preferred in different English speaking countries.

Chambers and Harper confirm that the spelling of whiskey is most prevalent in the US and Ireland while the spelling without an e is used in England and Scotland. Harper notes that this geographic distinction between the use of whisky in Scotland and whiskey in the US and Ireland was invented in the 19th century. ​The Ngram of whiskey and whisky used in British English (see the previous post) indicates that after 1850 most British writers used whisky while others continued using whiskey. Even though the Ngrams cannot corroborate the geographic nature of each spelling's use (i.e. Scotland vs Ireland) nor tell us the context in which each spelling occurs, it supports Harper's premise that there was a change in how the spellings were used at that time.

So while whisky and whiskey started off as mid-eighteenth century alternate spellings for grain spirits, by the mid-nineteenth century the two spellings have split in how they are being used.  Yet the larger questions of why the alternate spellings of whisk(e)y took on a geographic distinction as Harper and others claims is still unanswered.