ADI's Judging of Craft Spirits Continues to Set a High Bar

In February, the American Distilling Institute will hold its 11th Annual Judging of Craft Spirits, making it one of the longest running and most respected spirit competitions in the United States. The mission of ADI's judging is to help promote the craft distillers, blenders, bitters makers and producers of aperitif & fortified wines that are making the finest quality artisan spirits and to give participating producers valuable, unbiased, third-party feedback on the quality and process of their products. To achieve this mission ADI has developed a set of industry leading protocols that govern how the spirits are handled and tasted, we select our judging staff from the top spirit experts in the world, and our awards are solely earned based on individual merit.

What most spirit competitions will not tell you is that it is impossible to eliminate all subjectivity from a judging performed by human beings. However, because ADI is committed to seeing that each spirit receives the most objective evaluation possible, we put a lot of thought into all aspects of the judging that might impact how a spirit is perceived. Once all of the spirits have been received they are sorted by spirit class (whiskey, gin, etc.) and category (bourbon, old tom gin, etc.). Once this sorting has been finished the spirits are then organized into flights by the stewards based on proof, maturation, or flavoring. Once the stewards finish flighting the spirits, our lead steward David T. Smith, creates a schedule so that flights of unaged or lighter spirits go out first before aged or strongly flavored spirits. This schedule is split into a morning session and an afternoon session. This allows us to give some stronger spirits to the judges before lunch after which, a meal and an hours break allows their palate to rest and reset for the afternoon session. We even arrange special meals for the judges' breakfasts and lunches that eliminate strong flavors such as garlic and peppers that might linger and obscure their full sense of smell and taste. All of this is done so that the judges are able to fully taste and evaluate each spirit as well as the one that comes after it.

When flights are sent out to a panel of judges they receive some basic class and category information such as, unaged rum between 80 and 86 proof, and a line of Glencairn copita glasses, each marked with a different number. Each panel consists of at least four judges and each panel is organized to include a variety of training and experience such as, distillers, wholesalers/retailers, bartenders/owners, consultants, and journalists. While other spirit competition sometimes draw judges from more limited backgrounds, ADI believes that having judges from different disciplines on each panel helps create a fuller perspective of each spirit. The judges nose and taste each spirit individually, write tasting notes, comments about what they like, what potentially could be improved, and a numerical score. Because we use judges like Nancy Fraley, Aaron Knoll, Martian Cate, and Hubert Germain-Robin who have the experience to identify specific production process that create both positive and negative flavors, they are able to give more meaningful feedback to the distilleries that entered. Then this process is repeated for each spirit in the flight. In this system each spirit is evaluated and scored on the basses of its own merit and not in comparison to the other spirits that happen to be next to it. Once the judges have finished a flight the panel has as discussion to decide if any medals should be awarded. Sometimes this means no spirit in a flight receive a medal and at other times more than one might earn a gold medal.

Flavien Desoblin of the Brandy Library

ADI's Judging is know for having some of the highest standards and historically it has awarded fewer medals than other competitions. Each spirit has to earn an award solely based on whats in the glass, not its name, not its price point, not where it comes from, just how good the product is. What this means is that those spirits which earn a medal from ADI are among of the best craft spirits in the  world. The American Distilling Institute is committed to helping small-scale, independently owned spirits producers improve their craft, grow and promote their products in a growing market. And because of this commitment, ADI's Judging of Craft Spirits will continue to be a leader in the industry, refine our processes to achieve our mission, and to find new ways to preach the gospel of craft spirits to all the world.

How to Make Homemade Nocino Part 3

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While making my own nocino has not been a difficult process it does take quite a bit of time to rest and mellow. In part 1 I described the process of extracting the walnut flavors and creating the base liqueur. In part 2 I created a variety of spice mixes and decanted the fledgling nocino into nine glass jars.

1. Clove, Cinnamon
2. Cinnamon, Star Anise
3. Cinnamon, Clove, Star Anise, Vanilla
4. Star Anise, Vanilla
5. Lemon, Cinnamon, Clove
6. Lemon, Cinnamon, Star Anise
7. Lemon, Cinnamon, Clove, Star Anise, Vanilla
8. Lemon, Star Anise, Vanilla
9. No added spices.

Most recipes I've seen suggest that after the spices have been added, to let the nocino rest for up to a year. So almost exactly one year later I decanted and filtered each jar using a V60 coffee setup. For some silly reason I shook the first jar which stirred up a bunch of fine sediment and took forever to filter. With each successive jar I was careful not disturb the sediment which made the filtering step so much quicker. As I filtered each jar of nocino I cleaned the jars so that I could reuse them. 

At the time I was doing this my wife and I had a 1 year old boy and I didn't have a lot of time to spend with the nocino so after each jar was filtered I put the contents back into its now clean jar and sealed it back up. My intent was revisit them the next week and see which spice mix I liked best. However, time has a way of slipping away from you when you have a baby so I didn't come back to retaste the nocino until more than a year after I filtered them.

Tasting through each jar was very informative and a little disappointing. Except for the nocino that didn't have any spices added to it, none were good enough on their own to keep separate. In each one, the intensity of the spices was out of balance with the walnuts, sugar and alcohol. But, rather than throw them out I decided to blend some of them together and see if I could make the sum of the parts better than the whole. However, even after blending some of the jars together the results were less than stellar because I left the added spices to macerate for way too long.  At this point the only hope I have of saving the nocio is by adding some mint to it and trying to transform it into a fernet which might work better with its current intensity of the spices. 

Conclusions:

When I tasted the different jars of nocino there were a few things that were immediately obvious.

1. The nut flavor and mouthfeel of the nocino made by desiccating the green walnuts with raw sugar before I added the alcohol was by far superior to macerating the green walnuts with alcohol and simple syrup.
2. Macerating the lemon with the green walnuts, alcohol and simple syrup was way to long and it left a not so pleasant and bitter  lemon flavor from the zest.
3. Even though I tried to put small quantities of spices in each jar, I included way too much. while there are some that I like more than others, in the future I will need to use less spices per unit volume and it would probably be best.
4. Macerating the spices for 12 months is too long. The nocino does need to rest for 12 months but it would be better to taste the nocino in week long intervals to see how the extraction progresses.
5. Time is your friend when making amazing nocino. When I tasted the 2 year old jar of nocino that I had filled without spices it was fantastic. After a year the tannins were still pretty strong, but after two years it has a good balance between bitter and sweet. It had a very nice, nose of light coco powder, and cedar...

In the end this was a fantastic project and even though I wasn't supper excited by any of the spices versions, I learned some excellent lessons that will make my next batch of nocino even better. 

Read Part 1                              Read Part 2

One Simple Way to Keep Your Vermouth Fresh

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Vermouth is an aromatized  and fortified wine which can be drunk neat, on the rocks with a twist or in a cocktail. Aromatize refers to the fact that herbs and botanicals are added to the wine to enhance its flavor, aroma and color; fortified refers to the fact that neutral spirit, usually from grape brandy is added to increase the alcohol content which makes the vermouth more stable and last longer. However, since vermouth is based on wine, an open bottle has a shorter lifespan than say an open bottle of whiskey.

In the last few years I have grown to appreciate quite a few cocktails that call for vermouth and so I have bought a bottle from time to time. However, since I usually drink spirits neat, I've run into the problem that my open bottle of vermouth goes off before I've used it up. Because I hate to be wasteful, I've mostly given up on buying vermouth.

In the lead up to 2016 Negroni Week I wanted to buy some vermouth to make my negronis and I didn't want it to bad after the week was over and I was done making cocktails for a while. That's when it hit me. I came up with the idea to buy four 250ml swing-top bottles from The Container Store, decant the vermouth into the smaller bottles and put them into the refrigerator. I used the first 250mls during the week making cocktails and the remaining bottles sat in the back of my refrigerator. Now, four months into this experiment I am happy to say that when I opened another small bottle, the vermouth was still fresh. Both the cold refrigerator and having little to no headspace in the smaller bottled worked together to extend the life of the vermouth that otherwise would have gone bad in that amount of time. 

I figured that every time I pour vermouth from a regular bottle some amount of oxygen gets mixed into the liquid that remains. Each time you do that, the more the vermouth sloshes around and the more oxygen gets into it. Now, if I drank vermouth or made cocktails more often this would be a problem. However, this simple and inexpensive trick of decanting full size vermouth bottles (which are less expensive per ounce) into smaller bottles has made it possible for me keep vermouth on hand at all times, waiting for me when a cocktail mood strikes. If you are like me and it has killed you to pour out bad vermouth because you were too slow to finish the bottle, give this little trick a shot.

Blind Tasting Bourbon Less Than $50

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A while ago I organized a blind tasting of bourbons that cost less than $50. I was inspired to put this together after a small group of friends and I did a blind tasting of whiskeys under $20. That tasting was both a lot of fun and introduced me to a couple of bourbons that I really love. Wanting to repeat this process I put together a game plan. First, I wanted to focus the tasting only on bourbons between $20 and $50. I picked this price point for two reasons: one, my expectation was the overall quality would be a little higher than the under $20 bracket; and two, because it falls in the range that I and many of my friends would feel comfortable spending on a bottle to drink at home from time to time without feeling like its so expensive or exceptional we'd have to save it for some sort of special occasion. Second,  I only wanted bourbons that I knew were sold by the distillery i.e. no Non-Distiller Producer bourbons like Bulleit or Black Maple Hill. Third, I didn't want any single barrel products because by nature their flavor profile can change from barrel to barrel and I wanted to help people find a bourbon that they would like and be able to return to and have it taste the same as it was at the party.  With these criteria in mind I went about finding bourbons that fit.

I found over dozen bourbons that matched my criteria however, 12 samples of bourbons even at 1/4 oz each starts to add up. I wanted to be sure that people could get home safely so I limited the field to nine. As I spread the word among my friends I was able to find about 25 people who committed to coming and who were willing to chip in to cover the costs of the whiskey.

Now, because I also wanted to participate in the tasting, the trick was figuring out how to set things up so the tasting was blind for me as well. The solution I settled on was I would mark nine brown paper lunch bags with the planetary symbols, Mars ♂, Venus ♀ etc. and then my wife bagged the bottles. For a couple of the bottles that were more easy to identify we decanted the bourbon into clean wine bottles.

The tasting was hosted at a friend's house and I placed three bottles of bourbon in the kitchen, the living room and a spare bedroom. The reason for this was that it forced people to move around and not just all congregate in one room of the house. I wasn't concerned about the order in which people tasted the bourbons so it worked fine. In a more formal tasting, flight order is important but for our purposes it was an easy sacrifice.

After a few hours or tasting and eating snacks, I collected the score sheets that I handed out the to tasters. They rated each bourbon from 1-10 based on what they liked. When I tallied the results, one of the first things that stood out was there were no bad bourbons in the batch.  While people liked some bourbons more than others there were no clear winners or losers. In the tasting under $20 it was very obvious that there were a couple of whiskeys that everyone liked and a couple that everyone didn't like, but not this time. This was an encouraging result because what it said to me was if you are going to buy a bourbon in the $20-$50 price range, you can be sure that it is a quality product though you can't guarantee the it will be your favorite.

After tallying the scores here were the results from our group of tasters:

1. Russel's Reserve 10 Year Old 90 Proof (45% ABV) Distilled by the Wild Turkey Distillery in Lawrenceburg, KY.

2. Henry DuYore's Straight Bourbon 91.3 Proof (45.65% ABV) Distilled by Ransom Spirits in Sheridan, OR. (This was the only craft bourbon and the only bourbon not from Kentucky in the tasting.)

3. John E. Fitzgerald Larceny 92 Proof (46% ABV) Distilled at the Bernheim distillery in Louisville, KY and owned by Heaven Hill.

4. Colonel E.H. Taylor Small Batch Bottled in Bond 100 Proof (50% ABV) Distilled at the Buffalo Trace Distillery in Frankfort, KY.

5. Woodford Reserve Distiller's Select, 90.4 Proof (45.2% ABV) Distilled at the Woodford Reserve Distillery in Versailles, KY and owned by Brown-Forman.

6. Elijah Craig 12 Year Old 94 Proof (47% ABV) Distilled at the Bernheim distillery in Louisville, KY and owned by Heaven Hill.

7. Four Roses Small Batch 90 Proof (45% ABV) Distilled at Four Roses in Lawrenceburg, KY.

8. Basil Hayden 80 Proof (40% ABV) Distilled at Jim Beam's Clermont and Frankfort distilleries in KY.

9. Maker's 46 94 Proof (47% ABV) Distilled at the Maker's Mark Distillery in Loretto, KY.

From my personal score sheet my highest rating went to Colonel Taylor which was something I had never tried before and I was happy to find a new bourbon  that I really enjoyed. The other interesting thing was I gave my lowest rating to Maker's 46 which didn't surprise me since I'm not a huge fan of Makers Mark. It was reassuring to see that my taste buds are pretty reliable both when I know what I'm drinking and when I tasting things blind. In the end, this was a really fun event to organize and it was a blast getting a house full of people drinking and discovering some really good bourbon.

Hawaiian Shochu Company: Blending Japanese Tradition with Aloha

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The Hawaiian Shochu Company makes Namihana Shochu. In Japanese, Nami means waves and Hana means flowers. Photo ©Ken Hirata

For more than 200 years the histories of Japan and Hawaii have been intertwined. On May 5, 1806, the first Japanese people ever recorded to have set foot in Hawaii arrived as survivors of the cargo ship Inawaka-maru, which was carried into the Pacific Ocean by a severe storm and left adrift for two months. The eight survivors were rescued by an American ship and left in the care of King Kamehameha I. Since then, the Japanese and Americans of Japanese descent, who make up the second largest ethnic group in Hawaii, have helped to shape the physical and cultural landscape of the islands. Today, the Hawaiian Shochu Company, founded by Ken and Yumiko Hirata, is continuing this long history of Japanese and Hawaiian cross-cultural pollination.

The Hiratas have been distilling and selling their shochu, a traditional Japanese distilled spirit, made from rice and sweet potatoes, on Oahu’s North Shore for the past three years. Getting to this point was a long and circuitous road. Years ago, while Hirata was visiting his parents, who had moved to Honolulu from Osaka, he sampled poi, a traditional Hawaiian staple. (Poi is a mash made from baked or steamed taro root, often the consistency of pudding.) As Hirata ate the poi, it occurred to him that poi could make an interesting shochu. However, that thought receded to the back of his mind as Hirata returned to Hong Kong and his job brokering U.S. Financial instruments.

From there Hirata moved to Osaka and worked with artists who made traditional Japanese ceramics and textiles. But after developing a skin condition, Hirata and his wife moved, this time to Australia. It was during this time in Australia that the idea of making traditional shochu began to take shape.

Around 2005, the Hiratas moved to Kagoshima, Japan, the epicenter of shochu production for the past 500 years. Ken Hirata determined that he wanted to apprentice with Toshihiro Manzen, a master distiller with more than 30 years of experience. Hirata described the process by which he approached Manzen for an apprenticeship as a kung fu film. Manzen’s distillery is tucked away in a remote valley outside Kagoshima, surrounded by forests and planted near a stream. Hirata wrote Manzen numerous letters and visited the distillery again and again, each time being turned down until Manzen finally relented and agreed to take Hirata on as an apprentice. Hirata spent three years there learning how to make a very traditional style of imo shochu distilled from rice and sweet potatoes.

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Photo ©Ken Hirata

In 2008, Manzen sent Hirata off to start his own distillery. Driven by his passion and training to create shochu from sweet potatoes, Ken and Yumiko returned to Hawaii. Besides its sheer beauty and relaxed pace of life, more than 20 varieties of sweet potato are grown on Oahu, including the white-skinned and purple-fleshed Okinawan sweet potato. Ken Hirata believed that the Okinawan sweet potato would give him the aromas and flavors he was looking for. Slowly the Hawaiian Shochu Company arose from the red dirt of Oahu’s North Shore with Hirata performing much of the work himself. Surrounded by the wild grasses of an old cane field, the Hiratas’ distillery is tucked away on a quiet road in the town of Haleiwa. While Honolulu is a bustling city that sees millions of tourists flock to Pearl Harbor and the beaches of Waikiki, Haleiwa, on the other side of the mountain, has a slower pace that feels much more relaxed.

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Photo ©Eric Zandona

The Hawaiian Shochu Company officially began production in 2013, making a traditional sweet potato shochu using methods and equipment that are hundreds of years old. Since the mid-sixteenth century the Japanese have been making shochu by distilling a fermented mash of rice or rice and other starches such as barley, sweet potato or buckwheat. However, rice and sweet potatoes need an external agent to break down their starches into sugar. While traditional distillers in the West have relied on malted barley to provide the diastatic power necessary to convert starches into fermentable sugars, Japanese distillers have relied on koji mold. This particular strain of mold is very well adapted to creating the enzymes necessary for starch conversion. Hirata sprinkles the mold over steamed white rice which has been spread out into shallow wooden boxes and left to be propagated in a specially designed room called the koji room. The koji room is designed to hold the temperature and humidity at the ideal levels for the mold to flourish. During this propagation phase, which takes about three or four days, Hirata, with his years of training, checks the temperature and moisture content of the rice with his hands.

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Photo ©Eric Zandona

However, neither the koji nor the rice Hirata uses are cultivated in Hawaii, which means he has to import them. He orders the koji direct from Japan, but instead of importing Japanese rice, Hirata uses an heirloom variety of rice grown in California by a Japanese American family.

After about three days, the koji mold has propagated throughout the steamed rice and Hirata is ready to begin the fermentation phase. When Hirata left to start his distillery, Manzen gifted him 15 handmade ceramic fermentors that range in age from 100 to 150 years old and which hold between 550 and 650 liters. The vats are about four feet tall and buried in the ground up to their shoulders, which helps stabilize the temperature of the fermenting mash. Hirata adds the inoculated rice, water and yeast to his vats and lets the fermentation begin. After a day or so, Hirata steams his Hawaiian-grown sweet potatoes and adds them to the fermentors. The enzymes present in the fermenting rice slurry break down the sweet potato starches into sugar, which is then quickly consumed by the yeast and converted into alcohol.

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Photo ©Eric Zandona

About a week into the fermentation, Hirata checks the aromas and flavor of the mash, which should be approximately 12% alcohol, to see if it’s ready to be distilled. Hirata uses a 1,700-liter steam-injected wooden still made from Japanese cypress. The mash of fermented rice and sweet potato is distilled in one pass and he collects the hearts in a large glass-lined steel holding tank. Hirata and his wife repeat this process for two months until the holding tank is full. The shochu rests in the holding tank at 40% ABV for up to six months before it is bottled. What comes out of the still is slightly harsh and bitter, but mellows during this rest period into a lightly sweet and wonderfully aromatic spirit.

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Photo ©Eric Zandona

Once the shochu has finished its rest period, it is ready to be bottled. Ken Hirata proofs the shochu down to 30% ABV and he is able to fill about 3,000 bottles per batch. Once the bottling begins, Yumiko Hirata starts the process of labeling every bottle of their shochu by hand. The name Namihana is written in both English and Japanese, which serves both their American and Japanese customers. In Japanese, Nami means waves and Hana means flowers. This name suits their shochu well because it has a strong character with lots of floral aromas. Their batch #2, which was made with sweet potatoes grown on Molokai, had a very fruity nose with notes of ripe pear and Fuji apple. On the palate, the shochu started slightly sweet with fruity and floral notes and finished dry with no heat from the alcohol. Overall the spirit is light, elegant and simply wonderful to drink.

Because of their two-month production cycle and the six-month rest period, the Hiratas are only able to produce and bottle two batches of shochu per year. While using traditional methods to make shochu limits their total output, they are solely focused on the quality of the spirit. The results have been very well received, and even though they produce about 6,000 bottles per year they quickly sell out of each batch they make. A few cases go to local restaurants and hotels on Oahu and the rest is sold directly to customers who visit the distillery.

Visitors who make their way to the Hawaiian Shochu Company are greeted at the gate with wooden signs written both in English and Japanese. This is useful because many of the people who come to taste Hirata and Yumiko’s shochu are Japanese tourists who have heard about their national spirit being made in Haleiwa. After parking in the dirt field next to the distillery, a friendly little dog name Imo (Japanese for sweet potato) greets visitors at the door. The guests are asked to remove their shoes and given slippers to wear inside the distillery, most of which are sized for people with smaller feet. Once inside, the distillery has a simple open floor plan, which allows visitors to see almost the entire production area from the entryway. Near the door, the Hiratas have a six-foot table with a few chairs where they sit with their visitors, pour samples and describe how they make shochu.

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Photo ©Eric Zandona

The Hawaiian Shochu Company is a perfect blend of a traditional Japanese distillery with the Hawaiian spirit of aloha. Hirata and Yumiko are exacting in the production and packaging of their shochu as well as relaxed, generous and welcoming. Hirata, who is an avid surfer, is not just making a shochu in Hawaii, but a Hawaiian shochu that represents the terroir of the islands in a way that has never been explored. Finally, any trip to Oahu should include a drive over the mountain to visit Ken, Yumiko and Imo.

Originally published as part of the "Defining Craft" series in Distiller Magazine (Fall 2016): 64-71.