Stranahan’s Colorado Whiskey

Sorry for the time between posts but I’ve been busy with work and a few other things. Yes I’ve got a few in the hopper I hope to push out this weekend including but not limited to the ones I’ve promised before. Soooooo to kick off getting back in the swing I bring you Stranahan’s Colorado Whiskey.

I first heard about this Whiskey while reading the Flying Dog Brewery’swebsite. It turns out that Stranahan’s Brewery shares physical space and history with Flying Dog Brewery. The Whiskey is named after one of the founder’s of Flying Dog Brewery, Woody Creek resident and good friend of Hunter S. Thompson, George Stranahan. The majority owner is Jess Graber who met Stranahan while working as a firefighter on a call to put out a fire in one of George’s barns. They celebrated tapping barrel #1 in April 2004. From their website:

Full-bodied as the fire that bore it, this whiskey glowed amber from the start. When volunteer firefighter Jess Graber responded to a neighbor’s barn fire down the road, he never imagined any good could come of it. But the barn he made effort to save belonged to George Stranahan, long-time liquor connoisseur. When the fire settled, the two discovered a shared passion for the Colorado outdoors and a good pour of fine whiskey. And so Stranahan’s Colorado Whiskey was born. They developed a recipe for the smoothest, most flavorful whiskey in the world using the purity of their mountain surroundings to their advantage. Well, to your advantage. They say from each thing bad comes something good. For Jess, George, and fine whiskey drinkers alike, it’s amazing just how good it can be.

Here’s a nice video of a tour of the Distillery and some history and info on the whiskey. (Dig the cool J.J. Cale background music)

As you can see in the video they use a unique type of still that combines Bourbon and Scotch techniques.

Other whiskies claim to use the finest ingredients, but that’s tough for us to believe when ours are the only ingredients that carry the purity and the freshness of the Colorado Rockies. Our western barley is grown in the Northern Rockies, and our water can be found in the crisp mountain streams. The barley goes through a roller mill (half husk cracked, for the sake of detail). We have contracted with our neighbors – The Flying Dog Brewery, to craft a special four-barley fermented wash that gives the recipie its distinctively sweet flavor. We pipe the wash to distillery holding tanks with a filtering program special to Stranahan’s. From the holding tanks, the wash goes into a custom made combination pot/still, made by Vendome Copper Co. of Louisville, Kentucky. We distill it twice, of course, taking the best parts of the doubling run. And that’s what fills our 52.8 gallon charred, American white oak whiskey barrels. We age our whiskey a minimum of two years before it reaches bottled perfection for your drinking pleasure.

Unfortunately I couldn’t find any of Stranahan’s in Charleston but I happened to be in Atlanta for work yesterday and stopped off at a package store I always hit on the way back to pick up a few beers that I can’t get in South Carolina. While there I figured I’d see what they had in their Whiskey section and to my ecstatic surprise they were stocking Stranahan’s. I picked up the bottle at a cost of around $50.00 (maybe be $5.00 either direction I can’t remember) for 750ml along with 6 or 7 beer selections.

The first thing you notice about the whiskey is that each and every bottle is hand numbered by batch as well as a little note letting you know what the distiller was doing at the time of the bottlings. I picked up a bottle from Batch 8 bottled on 12-7-2004. The distiller was “listening to Ernest Tubb“. You might pick an equally perfect music to listen too when making whiskey but you sure as hell can’t pick a better one.

Ok now to the whiskey its self.

The whiskey is aged two years, but as the great blog lyke 2 drink notes,

Stranahan’s has a unique racking room that is humidified to protect the barrels from the dry conditions of the high plains desert. Norris said that without this step, the angel’s share of whiskey lost to evaporation would be 10 percent annually versus the 4 percent most distillers experience in other climates. The constant heat and temperature in the rack room also influences the aging cycle of the whiskey. Norris estimates that two years under these conditions are equal to about four years at other distilleries. Stranahan’s used heavily charred new American oak barrels to age its whiskey. The two year old Stranahan’s that we tried did indeed drink like an older whiskey, with a sweet edge.

Jess Graber says the distillery has a patent pending on its whiskey making process. In addition to what the company does in the racking room, the mile high altitude and large swings in barometric pressure forces the whiskey in and out of the wood. He said many microdistillers have opted to make vodka, rum and brandy because it creates a quicker cash flow and easier to produce than whiskey. “We decided that Colorado needed a whiskey,” Graber says.

I poured the 94 proof whiskey into a nice rocks glass with a single ice cube and no splash of water (next try will be with a small splash to see how that changes the character). The color is a deep amber, not as dark as Noah’s Millbut dark enough. It has a nice rich almost creamy caramel nose that continues through to the flavor. You can tell that this isn’t straight bourbon and it isn’t scotch, but it has hints of both. The rich caramel and somewhat buttery flavor is complimented with a nice sweetness, but not as sweet as you’d find in Bourbon whiskey. The finish continues with some oak, vanilla and a great smoothness with a slight cedary (is that a word?) drying of the mouth.

Overall I think this is an excellent whiskey. It’s not as in your face as Noah’s mill, but again it is a different type of product. If you’re a Small batch Scotch drinker or a small batch bourbon drinker you’ll enjoy this product. It’s very smooth and drinkable and I highly recommend it if you can find it. Stranahan’s does have a mail order option through Binny’s.