Distilled in Oregon

A History & Guide with Cocktail Recipes

Scott Stursa

• Publisher: The History Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781439659496
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

Early Oregon fur traders concocted a type of distilled beverage known as "Blue Ruin, " used in commerce with local Native Americans. Drawn by the abundant summer harvests of the Willamette Valley, distillers put down roots in the nineteenth century. Because of Oregon's early sunset on legal liquor production in 1916--four years before national Prohibition--hundreds of illicit stills popped up across the state. Residents of Portland remained well supplied, thanks to the infamous efforts of Mayor George Baker. The failed national experiment ended in 1933, and Hood River Distillers resurrected the sensible enterprise of turning surplus fruit into brandy in 1934. Thanks in part to the renowned Clear Creek Distillery triggering a craft distilling movement in 1985, the state now boasts seventy distilleries and counting. Author Scott Stursa leads a journey through the history of distilling in the Beaver State.

1

DISTILLED SPIRITS

A QUICK PRIMER

Before commencing my account of distilling in Oregon, I’m providing a brief overview of distillation and of the various types of spirits produced by distillers, the intent being to avoid disrupting the narrative with descriptive digressions. For example, in chapter 2, when I note that Conner was producing not whiskey but wheat-flavored rum, I don’t want to detour into an explanation of how those differ, so I’m doing that here.

Spirits distillation relies on the different boiling points of ethyl alcohol (ethanol) and water, the former being 173 degrees Fahrenheit and the latter being 212 degrees Fahrenheit. Heat any alcohol-containing beverage (beer or wine) to a temperature between these two, and only the ethanol will boil off. The actual process of distilling spirits is a little more complicated; generally, a distillation run consists of gradually heating the fermented material and monitoring the output from the still. As the contents of the still approach 173 degrees, a variety of volatile compounds begin to emerge. These include acetone and methanol, neither of which you want in your cocktail (unless you’re a native of Saturn’s moon Titan, in which case I expect you’ll also want a dash of ammonia and a spritz of methane with it). This head portion of the run is diverted and used for other purposes (such as removing stubborn stains). Toward the end of the run, as the temperature approaches 212 degrees, the output becomes increasingly watery, and this tail is likewise diverted.

Ethyl alcohol. The hydrogen atoms lack smiles because hydrogen is a sullen, bitter element, believing itself unfairly blamed for the Hindenburg disaster.

You’d expect the part between the head and tail to be called the body, but you’d be wrong. It’s instead called the heart, and many double-distilled spirits are described as being “from the heart of the heart” (admittedly “from the body of the body” just sounds creepy).

The original type of still used for distilling is known as a pot still, a simple device consisting of a closed container (the pot) that contains the fermented material. As this is heated, the alcohol vaporizes and rises to the top, where it is diverted into a coil of tubular copper or stainless steel (the worm). Here it cools and condenses, and the output is collected as it exits the coil.

This type of still cannot produce spirits much stronger than 80 percent ABV (alcohol by volume), although multiple distillation (returning the spirit to the still and repeating the process) can raise this to 85 to 90 percent. This is sufficient for most traditional spirits because if you want the character of the original raw material (grapes, apples, barley, whatever) to show up in the final product, then you don’t want to distill it any stronger than 70 percent ABV.

A pot still is a type of batch still, so called because the product is produced in batches. After a run, the contents of the pot must be removed, the still cleaned and a new batch of fermented material added before the next run begins.

In the early 1800s, a new type of still was devised, the column still. The workings of these are rather complex, and I’m not going to describe them here. The important things to remember about the column still are 1) it can run continuously, and 2) it can produce spirits as strong as 95 to 96 percent ABV. Spirits produced at 95 percent ABV or higher are known as neutral spirits, so called because, at this level, supposedly no character of the original raw material remains. I say “supposedly” because those with a keen sense of smell can often pick up a little aroma, and if the spirit was made from a particularly pungent material, such as molasses, then most people can smell it.

A pot still, so simple a hillbilly can build one. Diagram by the author.

There are all sorts of variations in the design of both pot and column stills, and there is even a hybrid type, essentially a pot still with a column on top (these are known as reflux stills). This type is favored by many craft distillers, who often call them pot stills. Although they operate in batch mode, they are not, strictly speaking, pot stills.

Distillation was discovered in the first century AD by alchemists in Alexandria, the scientific center of the Roman Empire (another resident of the city designed and built an early type of steam engine). Like steam power, distillation was viewed mostly as a curiosity, and the Romans didn’t do much with it (just as well, as the combination of Caligula and gin would have considerably hastened the demise of the empire).

After the collapse of civilization in western Europe, much of the Romans’ knowledge was preserved by Islamic scholars and alchemists, who distilled spirits for medicines and perfumes, and if they sampled it at all, did so only to ensure its purity (of course).

The science of distillation began to spread to Christian Europe in the late middle ages. In the French districts of Armagnac and Cognac, where the mediocre quality of the wine made it uncompetitive with wine from neighboring Bordeaux, the locals discovered distilling their bad wine created a product that found a receptive market. To this day, the French like to say “the worst grapes make the best brandy” (they also claim to build reliable automobiles). Farther north, in the Calvados district of Normandy, the producers of hard apple cider made a similar discovery.

The French called these fruit-based spirits eau de vie (“water of life”), and while it’s true they were clear and colorless, they certainly did not go down like water. However, like most liquid products of the era, they were put in barrels for storage or transport, and it was quickly appreciated that time in wood gave the spirit a mellower character, as well as imparting a warm golden color.

One of the export markets for the French spirits was the Netherlands, where it was known as brandewijn (“burned wine”), a word that eventually evolved into brandy. Thus, while eau de vie and brandy are technically synonymous, in modern usage the former is used to designate unaged (colorless) fruit spirits, and the latter is used for those having spent time in a barrel.

Grappa (in France known as marc) is a type of eau de vie made from pomace, the skins, pulp, seeds and stems left over from winemaking. Traditionally made to provide the peasantry with affordable brandy, in the 1990s a number of Italian producers discovered the combination of ignorance, the word “imported” and the use of a fancy bottle would achieve significant sales in the United States. This is not to say there isn’t some decent grappa being made, both in Italy and in the United States, but most European grappa is swill.

Distilling eventually reached Ireland and Scotland, where there wasn’t much wine but plenty of beer, so beer is what was poured into the still. The Irish and Scots also called their spirit “water of life,” which in Gaelic is uisce beatha. The first of these two words is pronounced “iss-kee” and eventually evolved into the word whiskey.

Like the French brandy makers, the whiskey producers also discovered time in the barrel improved their product.

Because yeast cannot work on a plain grain mash, at least a portion of it must be malted. Malting refers to the process of allowing the grain to germinate prior to drying, grinding and mashing. The germination process creates enzymes in the grain that convert starch to sugar, allowing yeast to convert the sugar to alcohol. Because the action of these enzymes is catalytic, they are not used up in the process and will eventually convert all the starch in a mash, even that which is unmalted.

Malted barley contains more of these enzymes than most grains and is particularly efficient at starch-to-sugar conversion. For this reason, it’s used in the production of nearly every whiskey, be it Irish (partly grain barley), bourbon (mostly corn), rye whiskey (mostly rye) or Canadian (usually mostly rye but not always). The only large distillery not using malt is Alberta Springs (Calgary, Canada), which uses an enzyme extracted from Aspergillus fungus. Many craft distillers use this as well.

Some whiskeys are made entirely from malted grain; these are known as malt whiskeys. The term single malt means the whiskey came from a single distillery, as opposed to a blend of malt whiskeys from multiple distilleries.

Rice being a grain, a fermented beverage made from it is technically a beer. But because the method used to make sake, using Aspergillus fungus and specific types of yeast, produces alcohol levels much higher than most beer, sake is commonly called rice wine (that, plus it lacks bubbles). Again, because rice is a grain, a distilled spirit made from it is technically a whiskey. In China, locally distilled grain spirits are known as baijiu (pronounced “Bye Joe”), and those made from rice are considered a subtype of baijiu (others are made from barley or millet, and most baijiu is made from sorghum). The Korean equivalent of baijiu is soju, and in Japan, it’s known as shochu, and the rice-based version is called kome.

In the 1500s, the Dutch developed a spirit known as Genever (Dutch for juniper). A freshly distilled batch of grain spirit (usually malted rye and barley) would be redistilled in a still containing a tray of crushed juniper berries along with a number of herbs and spices (known as the “botanicals”). The alcohol vapor would pass through the tray, picking up the flavor of the berries and botanicals. This spirit was an immediate hit, particularly among English troops sent to the Netherlands by Elizabeth I to assist the Dutch in their war of independence. The English called it “gen” for short, and this word evolved into gin (it was also called “Dutch courage,” which either meant you needed courage to drink it or meant drinking it enhanced your courage, or possibly both).

Gin production was undertaken with enthusiasm in England. Cheap to make, it was immensely popular with people of limited means, and the resulting “gin craze” of the early 1700s led to numerous acts of Parliament intended to control its consumption. Without exception, these failed.

When the column still was introduced in the 1800s, English gin producers began using the higher-alcohol spirit produced by these. The result was a lighter, drier style of gin, becoming known as London dry gin.

In eastern Europe and Russia, there was little appreciation for flavored and/or aged spirits, with the main goal being to minimize the time between pouring the spirit and getting it into one’s stomach. Aroma and taste were therefore irrelevant. Vodka (a Russian term meaning “little water”) was initially made in pot stills, using multiple passes through the still (at least three). But with the introduction of the column still, production was simplified, and everyone—even the peasants—could afford it. Modern vodka is a neutral spirit watered down to 40 to 50 percent ABV. Most vodkas use neutral spirits made from grain, but it can actually be made from anything (potatoes, molasses, sugar beets, whatever).

The New World has added a couple of selections to the spirits lineup, one based on an indigenous source and the other on an introduced one. The first of these sources is agave, the sap of which was being fermented by the Aztecs into a beverage known as pulque. Pulque is an acquired taste, one the Spanish were unable to acquire, so they tried running it through a still. The result was no better than pulque itself. Noting that a favorite dish of the natives, the roasted heart of the agave, was rather sweet, they chopped, pulped, fermented and distilled some of these. The output was still a rather rough spirit but was better than distilled pulque, and became known as mezcal (or, if it conforms to certain compositional and geographic standards, tequila).

Not long after Europeans colonized the West Indies, sugar cane was introduced, and by the early 1600s, most of the islands had a large number of sugar plantations. Molasses is a byproduct of sugar production, and there being only a limited market for it, most of it was fed to livestock or simply dumped. Eventually, an enterprising plantation owner hit on the idea of adding warm water and yeast to it and, after fermentation completed, running it through a still. The resulting spirit was called rumbullion, and later shortened to rum (also called killdevil, probably because some of this early rum was so bad it was believed that enough of it would kill anything).

Some rum is made from fresh-pressed cane juice, some is made from white or brown sugar and some is made from cane syrup. But most is made from molasses. Rum is probably made in a wider variety of styles than any other spirit, ranging from light white rums to heavy dark ones to brandy-like ones made from cane juice and aged for more than twelve years in French oak (some people like to call these last “Caribbean cognac” and, in fact, they often taste more like brandy than rum).

The final major category of spirit is liqueur (also known as cordials). These are made by taking a base spirit (usually, but not always, brandy or neutral spirit), adding a sweetener (sugar, honey, some type of syrup) and optional flavoring. Liqueurs can be simple (most whiskey-based liqueurs involve nothing more than adding honey to the whiskey) to bewilderingly complex (Chartreuse, created by Carthusian monks in the early 1700s as a medicinal elixir, contains over one hundred ingredients). In the United States (and only the United States), liqueurs using a brandy base can be labeled “flavored brandy.” This unfortunate practice has led many to believe that brandy itself is sweet.

Schnapps, in Germany, is a generic term that can be applied to any distilled spirit. In the United States, schnapps is usually a liqueur using a neutral spirits base. These have usually, but not always, a higher proof than most liqueurs.

The plethora of flavored vodkas currently crowding liquor store shelves are not liqueurs because they are not sweetened.

These descriptions are as brief as I can make them and still be reasonably accurate. Purists will undoubtedly decry them as oversimplified, but this is as much space as I want to devote to this. I (and hopefully you as well) would like to get on with our story.

So, a quick review:

brandy: made from grapes or other fruit; in unaged form is known as eau de vie.

whiskey: made from grain, a portion of which is usually malted.

gin: neutral spirit infused with juniper and botanicals.

vodka: neutral spirit diluted with water.

mezcal/tequila: made from agave.

rum: made from sugar cane.

liqueur: any of the above with sweetener and optional flavoring added.

So now that you’re suitably informed, we can get on with our story.

2

BLUE RUIN

Lewis and Clark wintered at the mouth of the Columbia in 1805–6, building a camp called Fort Clatsop (the Clatsop being the local tribe of Chinook-speaking natives). During the next few years, the only whites visiting the area were wandering fur-trappers, and it wasn’t until 1811 that they established their first permanent presence, that being Fort Astoria (located, as you might have ...