Experimentation

John Hansell had an interesting opportunity to taste some of the 1500 experiments happening at Buffalo Trace. Some wild and exciting ideas are flowing over there.

In the comments on his blog, someone has come up with a similar idea to one of my favorite thought experiments; smoke from non-peat sources. This came to me while I was grilling whiskey chicken with apple chips. The flavor combination was wonderful and got me thinking about how other smoke sources would work when halting malt.

Mike and I have talked about our future in this business, and we keep coming back to the desire to create our own whiskey. I think about maturation in the micro-climate of the Half Moon Bay coast which should give the slow temperature transitions more like Scotland than Tennesee. Many distilleries are using different wine casks, we're right next to Napa and have a wealth of varieties to use for maturation.

Oh, and Whiskey Chicken is: chicken breasts, olive oil, Canadian whiskey, and Grill Mates® Montreal Chicken Seasoning marinated for a couple hours before grilling with apple chips.