This is part three of an ongoing series on Innovation In The Spirits Industry.

V.01 was “Innovation In A Brand” about Knob Creek’s single barrel.

V.02, “Age Your Own Whiskey Kit” discussed the art & science in barrel-aging cocktails.

Happily – innovation sleeps, but awakes when someone chooses to call for change.

And, in Kentucky at the Buffalo Trace Distillery, they woke that lumbering giant with their newest brand, the singularly amazing Single Oak Project.

First – let’s get the basics covered for those that may want some background. We’re talking about bourbon, but exactly what is bourbon? Well, basically, bourbon is American whiskey and is and can only be American whiskey – it has to be made in America, and we’re very serious about that. Since ’64, our congress has said that no one else in the world can call any distillate containing at least 51% corn mash, bourbon. So, since the early 1800’s when bourbon was first made until very recently, bourbon has been basically the same thing. You distill it, you put it in a charred oak barrel, you age it and … voilà! You have bourbon.

Innovation though has started to change that reality. The first major innovation was from the Woodford Reserve distillery, whose Master Collection turned American whiskey history and practice on its head by using different methods of production to change the flavors of their whiskey, such as using maple wood, old wine or relatively old wood for the barrels to age their spirits. Then, Jim Beam gave us the Devil’s Cut, which innovated by inventing a process to suck the leftover bourbon out of the used oak barrels…

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Now, Buffalo Trace has gotten into the game by their Single Oak Project, and they are not mess’n around. Their innovation is that they have chosen SPECIFIC trees for their barrels and then have aged the whiskey in what they feel were the very best single trees that they could find. And, not just that, but TEN years ago, Warehouse Manager Ronnie Eddins went and walked around a forest in the Missouri Ozarks and picked 96 oak trees that they knew that they would use for barrels… Ten years ago. That’s forethought. That’s some nerdy distilling guys wondering what would happy if they used SPECIFIC trees to age their whiskey, and then even past that they aged the staves at different rates, which

The issue here is Barrels… Bourbon is aged in white oak – the trees are cut into staves, which the wood pieces that make up a barrel. These staves are then toasted to burn the inside of the barrel,

Charring Barrels

which is what causes whiskey to get a lot of its flavor and especially its color. Here’s the fun part (at least for those of you that will enjoy this nerdy nuance): How whisk(e)y works is that the high-proof, straight off the still alcohol goes into these barrels, and then the now-whisk(e)y will sit in that barrel for years, soaking into the wood. So, in the summer, when it’s hot – the whiskey will soak into the wood, pushed in as the heat causes the environment inside the barrel to expand. Conversely, in the winter, Kentucky gets cold – causing the wood to constrict which forces out all of the whiskey from the wood – and season after season of this sugars which caramelized during the charring process and natural color are pulled from the barrel, and that’s what causes whisk(e) y to be whisk(e)y. Sweet, ‘oakey’ & amber in color.

[Side Note: I am writing "whisk(e)y" with the brackets around the "e" because, generally for American whiskey, we spell the word with that "e", while in the UK, they leave out the "e"... with the exception of Maker's Mark, who, on their bottles of bourbon, spell whiskey, "whisky" in the UK fashion due to their Scottish heritage.]

It gets even more nerdy – turns out that the wood from the TOPS of the trees contain more sugars, while the harder, older wood at the bottom will not provide as much flavor to the whisk(e)y. So, what Buffalo Trace is doing is splitting their normal ol’ Buffalo Trace whiskey between barrels, EACH TREE getting their own barrels – but separating lots of it between the TOP and BOTTOM wood, which are made into staves and then into the barrels. So, not only are there 93 trees worth of experimentation, but really double that as they are selling different lots with the top & bottom staves, allowing YOU to taste the difference. That’s some nerdy shit, ‘eh? I love it.

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The big question though? Is this innovation going to produce a better whiskey? Is this crazy? Is this even innovation or just crazy people acting crazy? Well, we’ll find out, and when we find out, we’ll let you know.

First up, a cocktail from the previous menu, re-named and re-calibrated;  Charlie Don’t Surf.

On the previous menu, I had named it Fred.  This was back when I was making up a lot of drinks on the fly during one of my shifts and started to just give them people names.  As Jamie Boudreau once noted, drinks can take about 10 minutes to make up, drink names take a couple days to even a week.  So I went the easy route and named them after people.  I had a Bob, Arnie, Harry, Margaret…a bunch of others.  Oh, and a Fred.  Fred made it onto the cocktail menu at Liberty, but the damn thing never sold.  If I made it for someone, it was loved and ordered over and over again.

The easy solution, then, was to re-name the thing.  Also, I swapped Pommeau de Normandie (a low proof apple pomace that is 50% apple brandy and 50% apple cider) for the more expensive Calvados.

Anyways, here’s Charlie Don’t Surf (a reference to Apocalypse Now and The Clash)

1 oz gin
1 oz Pommeau de Normandie
1/2 lemon juice
1/2 simple syrup
2 barspoons mango puree
muddled ginger
Shake and double strain into a cocktail glass
Garnish with a kaffir lime leaf

Both Andrew and I have maintained individual blogs. Well, I had one, stopped updating it a few years ago (to the chagrin of both people who read it), and have only just written its epitaph. Andrew has had a nice little blog which he’s had for a short time. With this blog, we’ll be combining our writing on one site, AND, if we can manage to cajole their collectively lazy asses, our wonderful and talented staff. Oh, and what the hell, as long as you sing our praises and kiss our butts, we might even let YOU contribute (seriously, though, that’s gonna take a helluva lot of brown-nosing).

You can bet your sweet asses that we’ll be posting the goings on at Liberty, our upcoming events, menu changes, new spirits on our shelves and stuff like that. We’ll be writing about upcoming shows involving our staff, our friends and neighbors. There will, no doubt about it, be recipes for the cocktails on our menu, as well as profiles of our favorite spirits (we have, like 2.3 million bottles around, y’know).

Given that we all have completely inappropriate senses of humor and that we’re thoroughly irreverent, depraved and unfit for normal society, I’d imagine that this will not be your average blog. Us Liberty-folk tend to do things our own way. Along with all the dead-serious informative tidbits that will comprise the majority of our work here, expect heaping spoonfuls of sarcasm, classic smack-talk, jokes that only we find funny and, well, the periodic Friedman rant on right-wing demagogues or a classic Waldbauer drunk post.

In essence, we’re shooting for a lively, funny, entertaining and informative documentation of our small, epic little world here on 517 15th Ave. Friends, neighbors, family, welcome and please fasten your seatbelts.

And….seriously….Liberty Loves You. Every. Single. Day.