The cookie made me do it: Chocolate and Chai infused Rye Whiskey Liqueur

I have a new way of drinking my tea. 

“Your tea?” You may ask. 

Well, yes. But I wouldn’t bring it up if it weren’t pertinent. 

Every Christmas one of my coworkers makes a chocolate chai cookie. It is delightful and honestly one of the highlights of the holiday season. The first time I tried it, I thought to myself that it would feel even more decadent if it were also alcoholic. So I set out to figure out how to create it. 

Being me, I have a lot of whiskey on hand. Some of it amazingly high proof (high proof being better for infusing than low proof, think the difference between making tea using hot water and cold water). So having a lot of suitable whiskey on hand, I decided that it would need a whiskey base. But bourbon or rye? I ended up choosing rye for two reasons. One, I had a high proof rye that was a bit young that I wasn’t enjoying neat. And two, I thought rye flavors would play nicely with the chocolate I was planning on using. 

So I started with 1.5 cups of Rye whiskey, I used Willett distilled 2 year old rye because it was really high proof and relatively replaceable. You never know what is going to come of infusing so using something that you can't buy again isn't recommended. I added 4.5 tablespoons of loose chai tea blend to an infusing bag and let that steep for two hours. Buy a good loose tea (not powder) that you'd like to drink on it's own. I bought Reena's Chai from local tea vendor TeaSource. 

The chai infused rye was really spicy and very bitter at this point. It might have worked nice in a cocktail as a substitute for bitters...I might need to remember that idea. After removing the tea, I added the cacao nibs. About half a cup. I then let that sit for three days.

After three days, strain out the cacao nibs. Let it drain really well. Between the tea, the nibs and the tastings, I lost about half a cup of liquid by this point even though I thought I was squeezing everything really well. If you taste again at this point you will be convinced that what we have made is a bitter mess. A high proof bitter mess that's also really spicy. Think of it, tea and unsweetened chocolate. Yeah. Come to think of it, maybe this would make a better bitters...

So what counteracts bitterness? SUGAR!!! (though a little salt wouldn't have hurt either, but I just thought of that...) I dissolved half a cup of organic sugar into 3/8 of a cup of water. By my back-of-a-napkin calculations, this should bring it down below 80 proof, a nice gentle spot for a liqueur. Add that to the infused whiskey, give it a shake and you get a nice frothy liquid in your jar.

But one thing was missing. The taste is right, the smell is right, but the mouth feel is off. This is a chai tea inspired drink, even if it did travel down the inspiration road through cookie town. One of the best ways to enjoy chai is with milk. And so I tried that. I went 2 ounces of the liqueur and 1 ounce of the milk. 

It was very good. Creamy, chocolaty, spicy. Not too sweet but sweet enough to bring out the flavors of all the ingredients. I think this one is a winner.

Chocolate and Chai Rye whiskey liqueur

  • 1.5 cups rye whiskey (the high the proof the better)
  • 4.5 tbsp loose chai blend tea
  • 0.5 cup Cacao nibs
  • 0.5 cup sugar
  • .375 cup water

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Canadian Club Chairman's Select 100% Rye

In early October, Whisky Advocate ran a story by Canadian Whisky expert Davin De Kergommeaux about a new 100% Rye being released by Canadian Club. In the story, Davin mentioned that like many of the 100% Rye Canadian whiskies this was a product of Alberta Distillers. Well, that perked my curiosity. I’ve discovered that I like this particular style of whisky. But then I noticed that it wasn’t being released in the US. 

Drat.

So I did what any self respecting man would do. I went online and whined about it. Of course, I expected that next summer when I travel to Canada I would try to bring some home. But still, you always want what you can’t have. And then I was reminded of something. My Canadian friends are amazing people. 

See, some time passed. I went to work and back. I bought some Christmas gifts and had them delivered. But one day when I got home from work, I noticed a box on my front step when I didn’t remember ordering anything. Upon opening it, I saw it was an amazing Christmas gift from my friend Rick. Inside were two bottles of Canadian whisky only available in Canada and the little mini I reviewed last week.

One of those whiskies was Canadian Club 100% Rye. Though there isn’t an age statement on the bottle, Davin says it is aged for 7 years. That got me to thinking, this comes from Alberta Distillers. I still have a little of that 1910 rumored to come from there at 12 years old. And after doing a little digging in my samples I found a sample of the Alberta Premium 30 year old. I had to test these next to one another.

This was not a fair test. 

In my opinion, it just got better as it got older. The 1910 12 year was better than the Canadian Club, the 30 year was better than the 12. Ok so intuition was correct, but how does it do when it isn’t being unfairly tested. I mean, this is a $25 whisky. It would be extremely unusual if it could hang with $40 and $50 versions.

Canadian Club Chairman’s Select 100% Rye

Purchase Info: A very generous Christmas gift from my friend Rick. Available at LCBO (Liquor Control Board of Ontario) for ~$25 Canadian

Details: 40% ABV. Distilled and aged at Alberta Distillers.

Nose: Initial caramel that fades to reveal pine, brown sugar, ethanol, and green cardamom pods

Mouth: Thin. White sugar, spearmint, oak, cinnamon, clove and then caramel as it moves to the back of the mouth.

Finish: Medium length. Warm with lingering spearmint, cinnamon and clove.

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Thoughts: This is your classic good, but not great situation. It’s delicate, I get a bit more minty ethanol than I’d like. But the sweetness and spice are decent enough. I feel like there are better options both in the Canadian Whisky and in the Rye realms.

That said, it was fun to taste something that I can’t buy in the US and to share that with friends. Sadly if it was available, I probably wouldn’t find myself buying it very often. There is nothing wrong with this whisky. I mean, I wouldn’t turn down a pour. There just isn’t much that’s drawing me in. It’s good. Not great.

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A Happy 2015 Cocktail

It’s New Year’s Eve. The one night of the year when tradition says that you need to break out the cheap bubbly wine and raise a glass to the fact that you survived yet another turning of the world’s odometer. 

And before you get all: “Wait just a damn minute. I like bourbon. I want bourbon. There is very little I like more in this world than bourbon and dammit I’m going to ring in the New Year with bourbon.” Let me reassure you, I’m with you. But, no one but a killjoy would tell you that on New Year’s Eve, you can’t have both. 

In fact, I took it upon myself to come up with at least one way you might want to try to combine them into one glass. This specific recipe uses the Cranberry Apple Shrub I made from the Shrubs book I reviewed a couple weeks ago. But the idea can be adapted much wider.

A Happy 2015 Cocktail

2 oz Wild Turkey 101 Bourbon
1 oz Cranberry Apple Shrub
Aromatic bitters (use your favorite, a few dashes, I used 1821 bitters from Atlanta)

  • stir ingredients in a mixing glass with ice 
  • pour into a wine glass or wide mouth cocktail glass and top with 3 oz or so of sparkling white wine.

My basic idea here was to use a classic whiskey cocktail as a base and move forward from there. I love a Manhattan so that’s where I started. But I really liked the way that the shrub and bourbon played together. Topping it off with champagne made it a bit more delicate and a bit more fun. The fruit and vinegar flavors in the shrub were easier to pick out, but at the same time subdued enough that they weren't overpowering. 

Could you use vermouth? Orange bitters? Sure! In fact why stop there? Maybe you’re a rye whiskey fan? Maybe mix up a Sazerac and pour it into a absinthe-rinsed cocktail or wine glass and top with sparkling wine. My wife loved this one. I had a cold so I needed to trust her judgement. 

Maybe you are a Canadian whisky or Irish whiskey fan and like the occasional whisky and ginger-ale highball? Make up some ginger syrup, squeeze some lemon juice in there and mix with the whiskey or whisky of your choice. Top that with the bubbly society wants you to consume and enjoy.

The point is to have fun with it. And if you are into this sort of thing, all of these drinks feel just a little bit more sophisticated than that five dollar four-pack of mini bottles of “champagne” that you bought from the liquor store end cap (even though I bought the same stuff when shopping for these).

"Baby Saz" Sazerac Rye

That is one pretty bottle, isn’t it? Reminds you of the cut glass and etched lettering of those old decanters you find in antique stores or on Those Pre-Pro Whiskey Men. It really is nice looking. It’d look nice on your shelf, looking old and sophisticated. 

But what if I told you, you couldn’t have this? That there were going to be places and times when this wouldn’t be available. If you were smart, you’d probably grab a Rittenhouse Rye or maybe a Bulliet. If you were a human on the internet, you’d probably run all around the city you live in and a few of the surrounding ones to go hunting for one. 

Well it’s true, it can be hard to find. 

WAIT! Don’t go running out to the car or bus yet! Because here is the thing. It depends on where you live and when you are looking. In Minnesota, at this particular point in time, it’s on most store shelves. I recently heard from a guy in Florida that said it was hard to find there. So wait a bit, or look online. Do NOT pay exorbitant sums for this just because it is rare where you live right now. Because, and I’m going to level with you, it’s a good rye but it isn’t a great-ohmygod-I-need-to-get-it-right-now rye. 

Here’s a little info. Sazerac Rye is a rye whiskey is produced by, you might have guessed it, the Sazerac Company. It is a non-age stated bottling. (Though if you look on the Sazerac website it’s still listed as six years. Which, while not legally binding, might be close. It is labeled as Straight and doesn’t have an age statement so it’s at least four.) The internet tells me that it is a barely legal rye with a mashbill including 51% rye or thereabouts. 

Sazerac Rye

Purchase info: $32.99 at Ace Spirits, Hopkins, MN

Details: 45% ABV

Nose: Soapy. Mint. Dried Grass. Cedar underneath.

Mouth: Thin Mouthfeel. Black pepper. Cedar. Mint. Banana candy

Finish: More Cedar and banana that fade to a lingering bitterness

Thoughts: Weird. Banana. This is passable when neat in a Glencairn glass. OK, nothing more. In a rocks glass, I find it better. Still just good, not great. I’ve used it to make a very tasty Sazerac cocktail. Which though it was spicier than with Rittenhouse, wasn’t actually better. If this were around $25 like it was when I first started buying it, I’d recommend it. But after creeping up to about $35, I’m not sure that you wouldn’t be just as happy grabbing one of the more readily available ryes out there. Maybe try one of those Canadian 100% Rye ones. I like it, but not enough to miss it if I can't get it.

Willett Family Estate Bottled Small Batch Rye, Aged 2 years

In September of 2012, I took my first tour of the Willett Distillery. There was a bit of cosmetic work still to be done, but they were up and running. I saw giant tanks full of fermenting mash and I was close enough to feel the heat coming off of their column still. I visited the warehouses and I took a lot of photos. Many ended up in the photo essay I did on it shortly after returning. Some of the photos I took there are among my favorite pictures I have taken at a distillery. It really is a beautiful place. That was just over two years ago. 

Willett has always had a following amongst the whiskey geeks for the single barrel bourbons and ryes that they release. Sourced whiskey, that through skillful aging and careful selection, has come to be known as some of the best you can buy. And that’s not just the old-timers talking about what used to be. There are two that I bought within the last year that might be in my top five bourbons I’ve ever tasted. So needless to say when it was announced that Willett was distilling product of their own, the Whiskyratti were all atwitter at what might come of it.

In September 2014 I picked up a bottle of Willett Estate Bottled Rye, aged two years. Was this what I saw in the tanks or going through the stills two years ago? Probably not, since there wasn’t quite enough time for that (I was there almost two years to the day and they needed some time to select and bottle it). But it’s fun to think that as I drove past or toured the warehouses on that first trip this young rye was in there somewhere, just settling in to take its short nap on its way to becoming the juice in my bottle.

Here’s what the distillery has to say about it:

In the bottling of this Rye Whsikey, we commingled the high rye Willett mash bill (74% rye, 11% corn, 15% malted barley) with the low rye Willett mash bill (51% rye, 34% corn, 15% malted barley). A larger percentage of the high rye mash bill was used in the commingling process. This is a non-chillfiltered Rye Whiskey.

Willett Family Estate Bottled Small Batch Rye, Aged 2 years

Purchase info: $35 at the distillery gift shop

Details: 55.7% ABV. Distilled, aged and bottled by Willett Distillery. Cask strength. Small Batch, not single barrel like other Family Estate Bottled releases I've had.

Nose: Grain forward. Mint leaves, orange, pine sap, green cardamom pods.

Mouth: Sweet but with a definite tingle. Grain, savory herbs and spearmint.

Finish: Nice and long. Sweet and minty.

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Thoughts: First off let me say this is a decent two year old whiskey. It might be the best I’ve had. That, of course, does not mean this is a great whiskey by any stretch of the imagination. It’s very good. But it’s very good for a two year old. This isn’t even old enough to be called whiskey in most whiskey-making countries. I have two different recommendations depending on who you are. 

  1. If you are a lover of Willett and want to taste what they have been up to: buy this. It’s tasty enough that if you love it, like some do, awesome! If not, it’s cheap enough that you can say it fullfilled your curiosity.
  2. If you are new to rye whiskey: maybe wait. Not saying that you won’t like it, but you might want to let this one grow up a little more. It might disappoint if you aren’t prepared for it.

Review: Rittenhouse Rye Bottled in Bond

I like rye whiskey. It might be my favorite whiskey style, when I’m in certain moods. I tend to really enjoy the pine and pickle juice many ryes bring to the table. I’m one of those guys who loves sipping on the 95% MGPi ryes and the 100% Canadian Ryes. They are just the right change of pace when I’m looking to switch up from bourbon. 

I do not, however, tend to use them in a Sazerac, my favorite rye cocktail. I just can’t seem to get the balance right. Those kinds of ryes bring too much pine to the party. Which is fine, it just means that I also need to keep a rye on hand that brings the classic rye rye flavor profile as well. One that isn’t a pine and pickle juice sort of rye.

Rittenhouse Rye Bottled in Bond is not a pine and pickle juice sort of rye. There are a bunch of others. Baby Sazerac is nice, if you can find it. Wild Turkey Rye 101 is the same. There are others. But I tend to settle on Rittenhouse myself. It’s a decent price. It’s a decent proof. And most importantly, it’s available whenever I go looking for it. 

Rittenhouse Rye Bottled-in-Bond

Purchase Info: $20-$25…I forget at Blue Max, Burnsville, MN

Details: Bottled in Bond, so 50% ABV, D.S.P. KY 354 (Brown-Forman for Heaven Hill)

Nose: fresh cut pine boards, citrus, dried grasses. Toffee-getting stronger the longer it sits.

Mouth: first sip is really hot. Under that is molasses, somehow sweet and bitter at the same time. Ginger, fruit and mint.

Finish: mouth-tingling cinnamon red hot candies with lingering heat and bitterness. Faint pine.

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Thoughts: I like this one, but I usually reserve it for cocktails. It makes a mean sazerac. The proof and spice hold their own against other ingredients. I find it to be a lot like a lovely, really spicy, bourbon. I tend not to sip it neat. Don’t get me wrong, it’s perfectly nice for sipping, but if I’m reaching for a rye over a bourbon, I want it to be more rye-ish and less bourbon-ish. For me, the pine and pickle juice of many Canadian or MGPi ryes tend to be farther away from the bourbon flavor profile and what I’m looking for if I’m looking for a change of pace. Very nice though and a great price on it at around $25 (in Minnesota).

James E. Pepper 1776 Straight Rye Whiskey

Last November, when I was in Kentucky, I was looking for something I couldn’t get at home. I stood in the whiskey aisle of Liquor Barn trying to find something that was both normally unavailable to me and affordable. I looked for a while. A long while. My wife was in a hurry to get to the hotel. I wasn’t making her happy with my dawdling.

It didn’t take too much longer for me to finally grab something that I’d heard of, but hadn't had. That something was James E. Pepper 1776 Rye. I’d remembered that I’d heard something about it. Problem was, that I didn’t remember what I’d heard. I thought I remembered something positive. At the very least, I seemed to remember that I hadn’t heard anything bad. 

It turns out I had heard the good things about the 15 year version of the James E. Pepper line. And this was not that. In fact, after I got home, I realized that it claimed to have 95% Rye. So…MGPi. But I tend to like that flavor profile. And it was 100 proof and under $30 so I wasn’t too upset with the pickup.

James E. Pepper 1776 Straight Rye Whiskey

Purchase info: ~$28, Liquor Barn, Louisville, KY

Nose: Pine forest and mint. Hints of cherry fruitiness, citrus and tobacco.

Mouth: Thick and oily. Mint. Soap. More cherry hints. Lots of pine and pickle juice.

Finish: More pickle. Warmth that lasts. Mint that lasts even longer.

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Thoughts: I thought the nose was the most interesting part of this one. It’s very nice. I Iiked the whiskey neat, my wife didn’t. Though I will admit, it is a bit one-note. But it made a good Sazerac (which is my go to rye cocktail). In the end, this is basically a higher proof version of Bulleit Rye. It’s a bit sweeter. The flavors are a little bit muddier. If you like that flavor profile and this is sold near you, pick it up (if you don’t like that flavor profile, I’d advise you to skip it). It's a pleasant enough whiskey, but what I really like about it is that the bottler isn’t charging an arm and a leg for something they didn’t produce. MGPi juice gets a poor reputation, not because it is bad, but because people keep trying to pass it off as their own “craft” and charging small producer prices for it. In this case, it’s about the same price as the most widely distributed MGPi (Bulleit) and it’s a higher proof. So that’s a win.

The disappointment and redemption of Fleischmann's Straight Rye

It’s mid-March 2013 and I’m about to embark on one of the most disappointing, and yet ultimately most interesting, hunts of my life: the hunt for Fleischmann’s Straight Rye. 

I discovered that Fleischmann’s Straight Rye existed, coincidentally, by finding out that it had been replaced. As Sazerac is wont to do, a statement that hinted at an age had been removed and replaced with a bit of nonsense in the same typeface. Straight Rye Whiskey had turned to Mash Rye Whiskey. 

A label change would not normally be enough to send me searching for a whiskey. But in the article, Chuck mentioned that it was the only rye made at the Barton distillery and that it is distributed only in Northern Wisconsin. Well, that’s home. And for the next few months every time I went back home, I checked the liquor stores to see if I could find it. And in October 2013, I finally did. 

Now, Fleischmann’s, whatever the spirit, is a bottom-shelf product. There is a vodka, gin, rum, brandy and blended whiskey to go along with that rye. But it’s an old name and was born from the same company that birthed the yeast that most baker’s are familiar with. That company was born in 1868. And along with being the first to introduce yeast sold in it’s modern form, they also were distillers. Wikipedia claims that they were America’s first commercial producer of gin but it’s Wikipedia, so take that with a grain of salt.

All that is to say that I really shouldn’t have expected a lot of this product. But, yet, I kind of did. I’d read good reviews of it. The forums at StraightBourbon.com had entire threads dedicated to singing its praises. It couldn’t be terrible, could it?

It couldn’t. It was not terrible. It was close to terrible, but not terrible. It was bad enough that I didn’t want to infuse it or cook with it for fear the flavor would come through. It made the only manhattan that I’ve ever dumped out. But it was better than say, Rebel Yell. So it sat on my shelf. For months. I tried giving it away as a curiosity sample, but felt bad doing it and more often than not cautioned the recipient to not drink it. What could I do? There is no way I can throw away a whiskey, yet it was taking up valuable space on the shelf. 

And so it sat. My excitement in a successful hunt turned to disappointment. At least until I traveled to Virginia and visited the A. Smith Bowman distillery (another Sazerac location). As a souvenir, my wife bought a bag of barrel char that she could stick in a container and smell every once in a while. They said if you dumped a tablespoon of whiskey in there every so often, it would retain the smell it came with. Now there was a use for that Fleischmann’s, but 1.75 liters would take a long time to disappear a tablespoon at a time. But it inspired me to try something. Aging bourbon in a second barrel is big right now. It could be another bourbon, a cognac, sherry or even rum barrel. I didn’t have a barrel, but I did have barrel char. And I had a lot of whiskey that I didn’t know what to do with. Hmmm…

I devised an experiment. I set up four mason jars and put a quarter cup of barrel char into each one. I then took added a cup of Fleischmann’s Rye, tightened the lid and put it into a closet, shaking it every day. I strained the first through a series of coffee filters after a week. The next was strained at two weeks, the third at a month and the final at 2 months. I also poured a four ounce sample to use as a control. The results were as follows:

Fleischmann’s Straight Rye Whiskey

Purchasing info: ~$12 for a 1.75L, Northern Lakes Cabin Stop, Hayward, WI (October 2013)

Nose: Silage/grain with hints of mint and cherry

Mouth: Thin, lightly sweet, hints of mint that feel medicinal.

Finish: Gentle with a faint charcoal aftertaste

Thoughts: This was an inexpensive curiosity. I can’t imagine using this for everyday drinking/mixing/cooking. Now that it seems to have been replaced by Mash Rye Whiskey, I doubt anyone other than the Straight Bourbon forum inhabitants will miss it.

Barrel Char Finishing Experiment 

Nose

  • Even after a week’s infusion, this doesn’t nose like the same whiskey. It’s sweeter, showing much more caramel. 
  • Not much difference between week one and two.
  • By one month, the silage from the control sample is gone and the cherries are back, but now they are chocolate covered. 
  • At two months, the cherries are not only chocolate covered, but dark chocolate covered and joined by rich caramel and char.

Mouth

  • A week made a lot of difference in the mouthfeel. It’s thicker and much sweeter. The bourbon influence is clear.
  • At two weeks, the silage flavors are gone. There is more cherry presence with hints of chocolate. Think of the liquid that runs out of the Christmas candy. It’s kinda cherry and kinda chocolate, but not quite either.
  • One month: Dark, rich and thick in the mouth. Cherry notes very pronounced with black pepper spice.
  • At two months this is like drinking a candy bar: toffee, coconut, nougat, chocolate. And of course that ever present cherry.

Finish

  • Week one: getting better
  • Week two: no real change
  • One month: The finish still has hints of the original medicinal mintiness but there is much more warmth and it lasts a lot longer
  • Two months: lingering spice and sweetness in the finish. After a bit the mint returns.

Thoughts

After a week or so, you start to notice that there is something interesting going on. It’s not there yet, but you know there is something. At about one month, it’s actually gotten to something I would drink on it’s own. the dichotomy between the thick, rich, spicy sweet mouth and the minty finish is very interesting. At two months, the flavors are even more complex, but they are starting to become muddied. If I were forced to chose one of these to bring to market, I’d go with the one month. 

I thought that this purchase was a bust. If this experiment hadn’t yielded something drinkable, I would have dumped it out and not thought about it again. But it turned out to be one of the most interesting redemption stories I’d ever witnessed. In fact, it was good enough that I poured the control and the one and two week infusions together and am reinfusing it. I’m starting at three weeks, but may let it go for another if it isn’t ready yet. I’m now actually quite excited about my bourbon-char finished rye whiskey.