craft: how bourbon is made

While in Owensboro, Meral and I toured the Green River Distillery. Right away you're greeted by advertising after the Prohibition painted upon one of the brick buildings.

 

I never made the effort to come a day or two earlier or stay a bit later when working in Louisville to tour a bourbon distillery. We had driven 2 hours from Louisville to Owensboro for ROMP, and I was mighty glad that there was a distillery right in town for me and Meral to tour--me because I used to love drinking Kentucky bourbon neat and Meral because she's a bartender and dabbles in mixology.

There are so many breweries in Kentucky, and I'm glad to finally have gotten far enough out of Louisville and find one in Owensboro. And here's a flowering bush I'd never seen before.

We had a lovely tour guide in Day Ogisi, who originates from New Orleans and a family of psychologists and studied accounting for a career. He knew a little bit about the Bay Area because his brother once lived in Sausalito. He told us about the original founder of Green River Whiskey, J.W. McCulloch, who originally was a tax collector for the Internal Revenue Service. One of the themes of McCulloch's advertising was the front side of the label featuring a horseshoe and the slogan "The Whiskey Without a Headache," which after Prohibition had to be changed because medical claims in advertising whiskey were forbidden. Day led us outdoors to the where the mash was being made in the stainless steel cooker with milled corn, and to which yeast was added. Outside smelled like bread rising and sweetness and added to the infernally hot temperature. 

 

Mashing or heating the grains converts the starch in the corn and rye or wheat into fermentable sugars. Inside the entrance and on the first floor of the distillery, we could see an outline of the steps to making the whiskey.

 

The Green River has been owned by several owners throughout its history, but the Bardstown Bourbon Company has restored its original name in homage to Green River Distilling Company being the 10th oldest distillery in the United States (indicated by DSP #10 or the 10th registered distillery in Kentucky--a license number that never goes away even as a distillery changes hands and names). I saw that my favorite, Four Roses was older being the 8th oldest and one I grew to like later and became very popular--Angel's Envy one of the very newest.

 

The good smells continued upstairs in the distillery and emitted from the fermentation tanks. Day had explained that before Prohibition, the distillery had burned down in 1918 and only recently rebuilt again by the Bardstown group after being moribund in the 1980s. 

Day opened the lid of one of the fermenters, and one could see the mash simmering and bubbling away as the yeast converted the sugars into alcohol in those 3 to 5 days of fermentation.

Copper!

 

Here's where the distillery endeavors to be the "whiskey without regrets" as it lets the liquor boil and condense and remove impurities.

Described by the Green River Distiller, "Green River Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey is 90 proof and has been aged more than five years at the distillery in Owensboro. It is rich in color with an amber hue and made with all Kentucky-grown corn, most from Daviess County. The mash bill is 70% corn, 21% winter rye, and 9% malted 2 and 6-row barley. The higher rye content results in a bourbon with warming spice notes on the nose and palate. Additional aroma notes to look for include cinnamon, dried cherry, and light leather. For taste, it has notes of cinnamon, vanilla, caramel, and chocolate mint. The finish is rich, thick, and lingering."

We then toured a bourbon warehouse or rickhouse, one of which I photographed at the beginning of this blog post and where barrels of whiskey are aged and stored. Green River ages their whiskey in charred oak barrels (which are only used once), and aging mellows the bite of the alcohol and lets the wood impart flavor to the spirit. The rickhouses built on this campus are not actual brick but of ceramic. 

Temperature changes in the weather evaporate bourbon in and out of the barrels--the bourbon lost to evaporation is called "Angel's Share." 

Barrels are generally stored in the rickhouse on their side in wooden framed “ricks”, or racks, which here span 3 barrels high on each floor. Sweet notes in bourbon come from the wood sugars that caramelize during the toasting process, and below is the very first barrel produced at Green River signed by all the employees.

We returned to the event space building to the tasting room. We tasted first the wheated bourbon, but I liked the second or less spicy Green River Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey the best. 

 

We also got to taste the Devil's Cut. The raw whiskey's portion that is absorbed and trapped in the barrel's wood is known as the Devil's Cut. I couldn't finish my shot as I was already woozy from sipping the first two shots. I've become such a lightweight now at imbibing bourbon. 

The bottle for Green River is unique. The raised horseshoe at the bottom of the bottle allows you to play quarter hockey when the bottle is upright. I played at ROMP and got a pin as well as a sticker from the distillery.

I'm now one who can no longer sip bourbon neat and prefer it now in an Old Fashion.

 

I watched this gentleman roll a barrel of bourbon to be delivered to another rickhouse for aging and storage.

The humidity in Kentucky also improves the barrel aging of the whiskey--bourbon ages faster and therefore can come to market sooner.

cook: pizza in my new ooni

I bought a pizza oven! I dithered a bit between the Koda which is only gas powered and the Karu which can cook a pizza fueled either by gas or charcoal and wood. I chose the latter and am chuffed that my dad's cast iron fits, and so we can sear steaks too. I invited Cecilia over for lunch after which we unboxed and assembled the oven. Pretty easy peasy. And I managed the day before to have my clay mate, Cathy pick up my pottery wheel to make room for the oven in my patio.               

 

On Friday night, we inaugurated the oven for pizza night. I think Cecilia must've made 3 pounds of dough. Patrick started the oven for me until my pyromaniacal tendencies took over. And then the frenzy of making pizzas and sliding them into the oven ensued though my first pizza was like a first pancake—pretty squashed and looking burnt sad.

 

Cecilia was very deft with the baking. Pizza cooking got easier, and we got more attuned to when to take the pizza out to rotate and return to the oven.

 

Even though the crust is black on the edges, it didn't taste burnt.

 

One of my favorite toppings was of Italian sausage, Castelvetrano olives and mushrooms.                      

A couple lessons learned: drain the crushed tomatoes or whip them with olive oil to emulsify and make them a bit thicker and less liquid so that the middle of the crust doesn’t get soggy or spray the edges of the pizza with water to slow the browning and prevent burning; use less toppings or if it’s gonna be a loaded pizza, move the toppings all the way to the edge of the crust and rotate the pizza a lot while baking.

cloth: mending and quilting

I so enjoyed my 2-dimensional design class that I was entertaining visions of getting a degree in studio art and maybe even transferring to a school for an M.F.A. I get grandiose dreams like that which is why I’ve boxes and boxes of fabrics. I decided that the stash has to go, and this is the summer to sew like a motherfucker. This week, I mended an oven mitt.    

I am also hand stitching a throw I call Liberty because all the cotton lawns in it are from Liberty of London. I sewed from a pattern called Prism at Purl Soho. When my variety of lawns had arrived, I was kind of angry at the selection that Purl Soho had sent as I thought some of the patterns were kind of lame. The one on the left of nursery animals and the contemporary ones of stars and paisleys were not my favorites like the florals.  

However, when I viewed the fabric all together in the quilt, it's not too bad. I kinda even like it. 

And so I'm bringing it to the sewing sweatshop at school. I think I’ve a lot of ivory cotton enough for binding and may even finish Liberty this weekend.
 

At my sewing sweatshop (aka my library workplace that has large enough tables to spread out quilts and cutting mat), I’m quilting too a baby/twin sized blanket on my domestic, named Modern Crosses. I spent at least 4 hours on a Friday afternoon wrestling a heavy blanket and stitching in the ditch.

 

I flipped over the quilt to see how much of a grid I had sewn. Oh no! There was not nearly enough stitching. 

I thought I had stitched a lot in the hours I was at the sewing sweatshop, but I see that I have many more blocks of crosses to outline. However, I’m also discovering how much I like the creative output of quilting and am no longer regretting that I dropped the art classes this summer. 

cook: bewildering at hankook instead of crying at h mart

Yesterday instead of shopping for banchan at H Mart in San Francisco, I drove instead to Hankook in Sunnyvale. First item on my list were the fish cakes.                                  

I texted Kat, BEWILDERING. I had no idea what she meant by fish cakes. I was assuming fish balls like I had bought at H Mart, which I didn't care for. These packages contained fish balls and cakes in all manner of fried and balled and flattened that looked a lot like prepared tofu but probably varied in their ingredients of shrimp and pork and whatever filler. Kat told me to head over to the unpackaged section. Aaah that makes sense! Some kind of buffet setup where you scoop your own containers of banchan, I thought. Only I see that everything is already prepackaged. I guess since the pandemic, grocery stores are not letting customers scoop and package their preferred portions of buffet items. 

Alrighty and away we go. Ooh, ooh, I see something I recognize--the pickled cucumbers.  And I finally see the fish cakes, Kat was wanting. I asked Kat, this right? And she replied Yaaasss.           

Kat was also texting me that the kimchi she had at home wasn't spicy enough and to pick up some more. And I finally see a sign for Jap Chae. Oh! They're sweet potato noodles I asked Kat? Yep, I had no clue.

 

Okay, but that's only 3 things I've got so far.

I wanted bean sprouts, but not this large a container! Kat said she was okay not eating bean sprouts. Okay no bean sprouts. So let me go find the next thing on the list which she instructed me to get--spicy marinated pork chops. I see lots of short rib and this below, nonspicy pork. Huh? Is there no more?

  

But wait, there's marinated pork and I read the ingredients on the package which include hot red pepper paste. The spicy pork is merely marinated pork. Okay into the cart it goes.

I feel like we need one more banchan, something like the eggplant I ate at a Korean restaurant in Berkeley with Bob and Lisa. Bugger! The tray for braised eggplant is empty.

 

I want one more banchan, something green I texted Kat to which she agreed and decided on this.

 

And what the heck is codonopsis? 

I read online that it's some kind of root from a family of plants grown in China and Korea to replenish energy or qi and used like ginseng. Only WebMD states that there's no evidence that Codonopsis slows down the growth of cancer cells, nor boosts immunity. Good to know! I ended up getting instead a package of a seasoned radish.