Touring Normandy France and Drinking Cidre Part IV

After abandoning La Route du Cidre on our trip, we made one more stop on our way to Honfleur for the night in Normandy, France. This stop was at Château du Breuil, whose cider I had believed I had had here in the states. Apparently, when research Honfluer, it had popped up, and I had gotten it confused with another place that does export cider, as this place only produces and cells calvados.

We pulled in at about the same time as a very large group of retired French folk. The main office told us either we take the tour with them for free in French, or we pay €4.50 each and wait 40 minutes for an English tour. We decided to take the free French tour.

They showed us the still first, which was actually the same one as we had seen back at Grandval, though this one looked automated and was possibly a continuous run. They had built the still building over a canal that they had dammed. I believe the water helps with the cooling of the still.

The still is actually running.

From there, we went to the barrel room, which was actually built in the 18^th Century. Some of the barrels were oval shaped, which Henrik Mattsson wrote in his book Calvados: Guide to the Region and the Apple Brandy was to avoid taxes. It is harder to know the exact amount of calvados was in an oval barrel, and with a little bribe, one might “think” they have less liquid and therefore pay a smaller tax.

Exterior of the barrel aging cellar

Interior of the barrel cellar with tourists

Sight glass to show the level of calvados in the barrel

Afterwards, we went to the tasting room, and I was very tempted to buy some pommeau, but things got a little busy and we got ignored before the tasting was complete, so we left.

I went there expecting to find cider, but I was mistaken as they were defiantly only selling calvados and calvados products. Admittedly, we had gone on a beer tour the week before in Dutch, and even though we didn’t understand a word, we were fascinated by the tour which had all sorts of displays and we understood quite a bit. This time around, it was some gal gesturing in French, and we got bored.

Further Reading: Calvados: Guide to the Region and the Apple Brandy. 

Next Week: Cider Bars and Brands

Book Review: Calvados

While getting ready for my trip to Normandy this summer, I found the book Calvados: Guide to the Region and the Apple Brandy by Henrik Mattsson. Published in 2010, it is only really available electronically for about $5. The only way to get a book was to buy a signed version for about 40 Euros, which is about $50 (free shipping world wide).

Calvados is apple cider that has been distilled into brandy, but only in certain region contained mostly in Normandy, France. The book has an introduction, history of calvados, explanation of the terroir and appellations, making, ageing, tasting, an extensive chapter on gastronomy completed with drinks and cooking recipes, 51 pages of producers, a visiting quick guide, and a glossary.

I find this book is informative and fascinating, explaining why calvados is an industry in Normandy, how they construct the orchards, make cider, distill into calvados, and much much more. Thing about this book was that it could have been an excellent guide book with all the French words and translations, signs and label expectations, and a grand list of producers. However, I feel that in order to be a good guide book, I have to have the ability to flip through it, and an ebook reader just doesn’t allow for that. However, $5 is a steal of a deal, and for that it is worth is. Before leaving for Normandy, I did go through the entire book and find all the French words he used to make my own translation guide, and I’m hoping that the rumors are true that the Tours Information will have English booklets on the Cidre Route, otherwise I will be attempting to “flip” though the eBook to find a producer we come across.

Mattson’s website also has a tasting sheet for calvados.

Hobbyist Moonshinin’

Max Watman, in closing of Chasing the White Dog, basically swears off being a distiller/moonshiner, even if he was only doing a pint at a time. He struggles with the “moral ambiguity” of being a hobbyist distiller, equating to something like a person who grows marijuana for himself and friends, which is different than someone who sets up a marijuana farm business. He did acquire some moonshine, the stuff made for pure profit, and said it was awful and needed to be regulated for health and safety. The stuff a hobbyist would make isn’t for profit, and he argues that it should be legalized. He says that with the way current laws are written, where one household can make not sellable 300 gallons of beer or wine a year (I was lead to believe it was 200 gallons, but maybe the laws changed), if you took all 300 of those gallons and distilled them at 10% conversion rate, you would have 30 gallons of spirit. He then alludes to the suggested idea that spirit sales would not decrease because people would want to test it out against store bought stuff (I have heard this to be a myth in New Zealand, where home distilling is legal, and supposedly spirit sales did not decrease). Watman thinks that if the government is really that scared about losing its tax money, hobbyists should have the option of paying $150 licensing fee a year without the ability to sell their spirits.

I have to say, I like this thinking. I recently poured five gallons of cider down the drain because it had a yeast film infection I couldn’t seem to get rid of. If I had bottled it, the infection would have come back. I could have pasteurized it, but I’m not set up to do that many bottles. Not that I’m set up to do distilling, either, but it would have been something new. And five gallons would have ended up as half a gallon of apple brandy, if that. Not only that, but in 2010, I made about 50 gallons of cider and wine, and I only did 40 gallons in 2011. I think, maybe if I could distill, I would ramp up production to make maybe a gallon of spirits (10 gallons more of cider?) a year, because I honestly don’t drink spirits that much. I sip cider and wine, but I down a cocktail. So the way I drink is faster, and my body just can’t handle the higher alcohol. However, I would be making pommeau.

Thing is, I’ve seen stove top stills in stores, and it wouldn’t be that hard with the internet to either buy one online or find plans to build one, which is what Watman did. I also do not think I would be caught by any authority. I know that sounds cocky, which is exactly why I can’t just be a moonshiner. There is a chance that I would be caught, and then I could never open my cider house, and who knows what other issues that would create with my career, and even that of my husband’s.

Oh, but I wish I could!

Book Review: Chasing the White Dog

I recently finished reading Chasing the White Dog by Max Watman, published in 2010. “White dog” is the term used for unaged whiskey, as all distilled spirits are clear until they have been aged in wood barrels, which is when the spirit turns gold. Watman takes you through moonshine history, research, interviews, and his own attempts at making moonshine. And when I say “moonshine,” I mean not licensed for distilling.

The book is laid out in such a way that Watman takes you through a chapter with his interviews, history, and research, followed by another chapter about his own personal experience. The quality of the two is so vastly different when read by somebody who does homebrewing and makes wine and cider read it. Watman’s research side is thorough, entertaining, and sometimes even poetic. He makes an excellent history book writer. However, juxtaposed to his own personal experience, he seems to have skipped doing research on fermentation. He is so anxious to distill that it is like he learned to run before he learned to walk, and he doesn’t understand why he is having problems distilling as a result. For example, my biggest problem happens when he attempts to make hard cider to distill into “apple jack.” Wrong – applejack is cold distillation. What he is doing is making apple eau da vie. He says the cider stinks, which he doesn’t know could have been avoided with the use of yeast nutrient. He thinks he has a ruined batch after about maybe a month, and procrastinating for another two months or longer, is surprised when it becomes clear and tastes better. That’s because cider really should not be consumed before three months, and if he waited nine months total, it would be even better yet. This holds true for any wine. I will give him points for knowing that adding sugar to apple juice to make cider will not gain him any friends among the craft-distillers with that method.

However, if you can get past his trials, he does a considerable amount of research on moonshine history and how today’s perception came about. He also researched court cases and sits in one one, and tours the areas that these happen. What is kind of neat is that he also attempts to find people who drink moonshine along with those who enforce laws and do NASCAR. These stories are all very amusing and he manages to write some poetic lines, though sometimes he gets a little off topic.

If you know nothing about making beer and wine, then I think you will find Chasing the White Dog an entertaining read about modern East Coast liquor enforcement. If you do know something about making beer and wine, then I think you will find this book entertaining with a dash of annoyance.

Meme Cat

Book Review: A History of the World in 6 Glasses

I almost got a minor in British history, so I am able, depending on the author, to sit down and read a history book. I picked up A History of the World in 6 Glasses by Tom Standage because it was on a library recommendation table. This book covers three alcohols: beer, wine, distilled spirits, and then moves into three non-alcohols: coffee, tea, and soda pop, and how they all shaped the world. Examples include:

• While beer and wine were probably discovered at the same time, beer was the dominate drink at first because pottery had not yet been invented, which was needed for winemaking.
• Wine took over as the dominate beverage with the Greeks, who would drink it watered down so that they could have free flowing thought without fighting.
• Rum production helped lead to the American Revolution, as the colonists were buying molasses from the French colonies in the Caribbean, so the British started the Molasses Tax.
• Coffee was the anti-alcohol, though it was at first met with a lot of resistance as being just as evil.
• Bricks of tea was used as currency in ancient China, and China only sold tea originally to the British in exchange for silver, as they were uninterested in European goods. This lead to the Opium War.
• Soda pop was an industrial revolution experiment, and the creator of Coca-Cola, John Pemberton, chose to put his medicinal concoction originally in wine but made the switch to in soda water instead of alcohol because the City of Atlanta, where he was, had a two year Prohibition in 1886.

I find this a fascinating read that is written not too dryly. However, I sometimes feel like Standage did a lot of research on one aspect of a topic, formed a good thesis, and gave it lots of support, only to kind of rush the conclusion and/or decide to stop researching. For example, he goes from how coffee houses started the French Revolution, but wraps up with to just two paragraphs on coffee today. It was a bit awkward.

Overall, though, I found this to be a fascinating read, and I would recommend this book to any history buffs.

Touring Three Distilleries in Portland, OR

As part of our workshop called “Distillation of Spirits 101,” my husband and I got to tour three distilleries in Portland, OR one Saturday.

The first one was Bull Run Distillery, which was not in operation yet. The tour was just our group with the owner Lee Medoff, and he was able to talk a lot about getting into the business. He had been distilling for over 15 years, previously at House Spirits. As a result, he actually designed his own stills and had them built locally instead of in Germany, which resulted in a huge cost savings. He seemed excited to be doing a whiskey using Oregon grains, brewed into a beer by an Oregon Brewery for him, and then distilling into a whiskey. He said it wasn’t that he was exactly following any style, but that was a unique thing. He didn’t want to copy, he wanted to be an orientalist! Other tidbits gained from Medoff:

• The Heads of distilling will cloud up when water is added, but the hearts won’t.
• While yeast does affect the flavor of wine and beer, it does not affect the flavor of distilled spirits. Therefore, he ferments with an aggressive yeast at warm temperatures to ensure that fermentation does not get stuck.
• Spirits oxidize at the speed of glaciers when they come into contact with air.
• He does not recommend anyone really making vodka because it is not cost effective. He added that so much of the flavor of vodka comes from the water used to dilute it from 190 proof and not so much the ingredients. He toured a vodka plant in Poland where the vodka going out one door was using the local nasty water and as a result was nasty. They shipped some 190 proof to another factory that used better water, and it was much better. Same base material but different waters resulting in different qualities.
• Grains are the most efficient/cost effective method of getting alcohol to distill, as sugar prices are currently raising as it is going towards creating fuel.

Overall, this was the best tour of the day, and my husband really wants to go back when the place is in operation.

The next place we went to was Integrity Spirits, where we were stood up by the owner and therefore did not get an official tour like we were suppose to. While we were waiting for him to show, we did taste their infused vodkas, gins, and absinthe. Afterwards, the tasting room employee was able to let us in to see the stills, and luckily our teachers had been there before and could discuss what we saw. Basically, Integrity buys grain spirits and puts them in their still. The still has a special kind of tank on it that the alcohol as steam passes over the herbs and spices to become infused before the steam condenses back into spirit. My husband and I had been there before accidentally.

The last stop for our day was at House Spirits Distillery. The owner, Christian Krogstad, gives tours on Saturday on the hour, so we were not the only ones on the tour, and as a result, the tour was not as custom as it had been at Bull Run. At Bull Run, he was able to skip a lot about how to distill because we already knew from the class, but if you don’t know how it is made, Krogstad did an excellent job explaining it (remember, both men used to work together). He even had little bottles of heads, hearts, and tails for you to smell. He explained that they have a local brewery make them the 7% potential alcohol beer wort for the whiskey which House Spirits then ferments. He said that distillers don’t call it “beer,” but instead “whiskey wash.” The fermented wash is distilled once reaching about 60 proof, becoming a “low wine.” It is distilled once more to about 160 proof. It takes 600 gallons of wash to yield 50 gallons ready to be aged in oak barrels. It is diluted slightly to 120 proof to prevent the alcohol evaporating too much when it is put into oak barrels. Traditionally, it is then aged for about two years, where it gets its gold color, and then is diluted again for sale. However, House Spirits also sells young and clear whiskey as White Dog Whiskey. We were able to taste this young whiskey, which as a very good nose and a slight bit of fruit on the taste. It was nice. We also tasted a gin made out of rye with juniper, lavender, coriander, cardamom, Indian sarsaparilla, sweet orange peel, and anise. The other tasting included a Scandinavian style Krogstad Aqua Vit, which was pretty refreshing.

Hous Spirit's prettier, "more photogenic" Lambic still

Base Product Distills into What Spirit?

Yesterday, I went through the basic outline of how spirits are made. I said that all spirits start with a raw material such as fruit or grain, which is then fermented into a beer or wine and then distilled. Today I will briefly discuss which spirits are made from what raw material sources.

• Brandy is usually made from grape wine. Cognac is a brandy from western France.
• Eau-de-vie is brandy that has been made from fruits that were fermented. Cavados is a special eau-de-vie that was made from apple cider from a specific region in France.
• Gin and absinth are not actually fermented from a raw material, but is usually a grain spirit like vodka that has been infused with herbs and spices. It can be distilled again after that, or bottled as is.
• Kirsch is made from fermented cherries like an eau-de-vie.
• Rum is made from fermented sugar cane or molasses.
• Tequila is made from the fermented agave plant.
• Vodka is just about any grain or vegetable that is fermented. By US law, it has to be distilled to 190 Proof before it can be diluted back down for sale.
• Whiskey, scotch, and bourbon are all made from grain beer, though bourbon has to have 51% of the grain be corn, which is not normally found in regular drinking beer unless the beer is cheap as corn is usually a filler. Also, no hops were added to the beer. This is one form of grain spirit.

Remember that a liqueur is a spirit in which sugar, and possibly flavoring, has been added. Most of the time, this is done with a grain neutral spirit such as vodka.

What is Distillation?

I’ve been poking around distilling a little bit, though I’m not really that serious about it. As a result, my husband and I took a two afternoon workshop called “Distillation of Spirits 101.” It ended up being a very chemistry intensive class, but it kind of just launched itself without really explaining things. I understood because I had toured and read up enough on the topic, but some of my classmates were completely lost from the moment we stepped in the door. Funny thing is, our instructors would pause sometimes and say, “You know there are people out in Kentucky without any front teeth making excellent moonshine and they don’t have the foggiest notion about all this chemistry stuff.” That is to say, you can make excellent spirits without exactly knowing the chemistry that is happening. Still, it got me thinking, how would I explain to someone what distilling is?

First off, there is the standard warning: Distilling in the United States is illegal without a license. It is, however, completely legal to study the topic. That said…

Our instructors did make a good point that distilling is broken down into five steps:

1. Raw Materials
2. Fermentation
3. Distilling
4. Aging
5. Bottling

So step one is to find raw materials, such as grapes, fruit, grains, etc. with either sugars or complex carbs in them that can be fermented into a beer or wine in step two, which is legal. I know I was oblivious that distilling started with beer and wine until I toured a distillery. I didn’t know where the alcohol came from, but I didn’t realize it came from beer or wine.

So step three is taking the beer and wine, which could range from 5% to 13% alcohol, and kind of boiling it to separate the alcohol from the water. Simply put, certain elements of the mixture will boil off as steam before other parts do, and the stem is collected and condensed back into a liquid.The first part to boil off is acetaldehyde and methanol and is called the heads, which is undesirable and sort of smells like nail polish remover. It makes an excellent cleaner due to the methanol alcohol. The second part, called the heart, is mostly ethanol, which is drinkable alcohol. Then the last part of boil off, called the tails, contains fusel oils and will kind of smell like a dirty dishcloth. Again, this is not really kept for drinking. Remember, this is a simplified explanation – the process of distilling requires technical distillation equipment that I’m not at all discussing in order to end up with a nearly pure alcohol, and the level of chemistry I am discussing here can be detected via smell and taste.

At this point, the spirit is clear, sometimes referred to as silver. It is completely drinkable, and it can be bottled and sold. However, many of the better spirits are often aged in oak barrels, which impart a few other flavors on the spirit such as vanilla, caramel, toast, or even tannin, and it changes color to a yellow, which can be called a “brown spirit” or a “gold spirit.” You never see a clear colored whiskey for sale because it is always aged, giving it the gold color. This aging time can also make the spirit mellower and less sharp. After aging a bit, this too can be bottled and sold.

And remember, a liqueur is a clear spirit which has been flavored and sweetened before bottling.

So that is my simple explanation about distilling. This also applies, to some degree, in making essential oils and fuel, but I’ve never looked into the difference in technique.

Other posts in which I talk about distilling:

• Clear Creek Distillery
• Pacific Distillery

Legal Notes of Home Distilling

I had said before that distilling alcohol is illegal here in the United States because of safety reasons due to fusel alcohols. However, on my recent trip to Pacific Distillery, they believe it is illegal to distill without a license has to do with taxation. They said that tax on beer and wine is low at $0.05 for a 12 oz beer can, $0.21 for a 750 mL wine bottle, but hard alcohol is charged $2.14 for 750 mL of 80 proof spirit.  I calculated that tax per serving, so it is still $0.05 for beer, about $0.04 for a serving of wine, and $0.13 per serving of hard alcohol. So in the government’s mind, the tax revenue lost to homebrewers is small, but the tax revenue lost to home distillers would be massive.

However, in New Zealand, spirit sales were down, and due to some loopholes in the law, the cost of enforcing distillation laws were becoming too costly, so in 1996, New Zealand made home distillation legal. What happened? Pacific Distillery said spirit sales soared (I have been unable to confirm this), and tax revenue went up. Speculation is that people began buying more out of stores to taste test against their own products, just like how there are probably more breweries in areas where there are more homebrewers: people want to see what other people do. I actually expect something like this phenomenon to happen with the increase of home cheese making to drive sales up in craft cheeses.

Further reading:

• Legal Considerations for Home Distillation
• Legal
• TTB
• Liquor Centre Group (the number of outlet growth was highest 1996-1997)
• New Zealand Consumer Price Index
• New Zealand – Beers of Our Lives
• Facts about Alcohol

Book Review: The Compleat Distiller

I’ve mentioned before that distilling in the United States without a license is illegal, but that doesn’t mean you can’t read up on the topic. However, libraries are not very keen on carrying books on the topic, and I find myself having to buy books. I was in at my local homebrew supply store, and we talked though some books, and I settled on buying The Compleat Distiller, second edition by Michael Nixon and Michael McCaw in 2004 out of New Zealand, where home distillation has been legal since 1996.

As far as the book goes, I chose this one because I wanted something technical with theories and whatnot. Chapter 1 kind of glosses over fermentation, simplifying it too much too quickly, but does talk a bit about doing high alcohol fermentations, as most yeasts die when the ABV gets high. Chapter 2 talks about how distillation works with a lot coming from high school chemistry class: vapor pressure, boiling points, mixtures and solutions, and some basic techniques. However, while I don’t really know how to distill, I’ve picked up that distilling has a head, heart, and tail, and you really only want to consume the heart as the other two contain undesirables such as fusel acohols. This chapter addresses fusel alcohols by telling you to send your distilled product though a filter! It isn’t until many chapters later that it even talks about trying to separate heads and tails out so that the fusels wouldn’t be there in the first place. To me, it should have been back with the science, so while the book is very informative, it is clunky.

It is a very technical book. It talks about using different styles of stills, boilers, and condensers. It talks about equiment design, things you can build yourself, operating procedures, making essential oils, and designing a workshop. The last chapter is “The science behind the curtain.” This is some intense chemistry, talking about atoms and molecules, moles and mols, molecular structures, avogadro, volumes of vapors, mol fractions, Dalton’s Law for Gases, Raoult’s Law for Liquids (boiling of mixtures), saturated vapor pressures, latent heat vaporization, logarithms, Clausius-Clapeyron Equation, Antoine Equation, Equilibrium Curves, azeotropes, reflux, and much more.

This is indeed an intense science book about distilling, but I have a feeling it is light when it comes to types of equipment or recipes, and therefore should not have been titled “compleat.” I should note that it is written in both metric and US measurements, though most measuring, testing, and taxation I have observed in the alcohol world is done in metric.