Follow Up for Episode 8

31 May Follow Up for Episode 8

I hope you enjoyed the most recent episode! Recording an AMA was always going to be a hectic mess, but there was some good information in there. I thought it might be useful to have a blog post that addressed all the things we referenced in this week’s episode, so here goes.

We mentioned a lot of books in response to the first question. I’ve listened back to the episode and made the following list:

Artisan Spirit Magazine

Whisky Advocate

Tasting Whiskey (Lew Bryson)

Whisky, Second Edition: Technology, Production and Marketing (Inge Russell, Graham Stewart)

The Alcohol Textbook  

Malt, Water, Yeast Series

Seagram’s Fundamentals of Distillery Practice (Herman F. Willkie, Joseph A. Prochaska, Bill Owens)

Michael Jackson

Artisan Distilling PDF

White Mule Press

Guide to Urban Moonshining (David Haskell, Colin Spoelman)

Gary Spedding

Proof (Adam Rogers)

Drinkology (James Waller)

Lew Bryson

Wayne Curtis

Luis Ayala

The Way of Whisky (Dave Broom)

The Noma Guide to Fermentation (René Redzepi, David Zilber)

There are so many more books that we would have loved to include, but I felt that this list was getting long enough already. Please get in touch if you’d like more recommendations!

Another topic that came up during the AMA was home distillation. (Obviously一we posted in a home distillation subreddit.)

While we certainly think that home distillation could be beneficial in some capacity, we DO NOT endorse it in America as it is currently illegal. There are a couple of reasons for this. Brian mentioned the economics of the situation: that is certainly part of it. But I think more important than that is the point about safety. It cannot be stressed enough: safety is a very real issue for established distillers that are working in dedicated distilleries. We are seeing more of a focus on improving distillery safety (ACSA will host Distillery Safety Management 101 in Cincinnati on June 27th), but it’s far from resolved. Thus, legalizing distillation within the home一where endless more variables exist一is a tricky issue. We will be doing an episode about it shortly.

Thank you for listening and taking an interest in what we do! Look out for new episodes every Wednesday.