Yes, there are rules to creating great whisky

By Kyle Kirves

It was World Whisky Day on Planet Earth. I was standing in the workshop of Spirit Hound Distillers in Lyons holding a glass the shape of an antique oil lamp and listening to head distiller Craig Englehorn walk through the steps that go into conjuring the elixir inside. It’s a little like hearing an alchemist tell you how he turns pig iron into platinum. Part teacher of the distilling art, part preacher of the whisky faith, Englehorn is Spirit Hound’s resident evangelist in all things, uh, spiritual.

A self-described traditionalist, he looks to the tried-and-true methods of old world distillers when crafting his spirits. “There is a reason for the wood to whisky ratio in this barrel,” Englehorn says, tapping a brand new, charred oak whisky barrel. “Use anything smaller, it will be over-oaked,” or have a charred, campfire-esque taste. Anything bigger and you lessen the character of the wood in the whisky. “I won’t say there’s nothing new under the sun in distilling. But if it could have been done another way, it probably has by somebody, somewhere, sometime. The methods work out there,” he says, meaning the world of Big Whisky, “and if they work there, they work here.”

Industry methods and best practices are one thing. Results, though, absolutely vary. If you’re looking for the burn you might get from drinking what your (ahem) old grandad might have tippled, you’ve come to the wrong place. “Our whisky has a more delicate character to it,” Englehorn says, “with a warm finish that isn’t over oaked. There’s a lot going on in there, flavor-wise.”

I take a sip of some of Spirit Hound’s still-in-process rye while Englehorn continues the lesson. And another. Hell, I’m getting smarter by the minute. At this rate, I’ll be a bona fide genius by the end of the tutorial.

And what a lecture hall it is. Yes, Spirit Hound consciously cultivates a rum-runner vibe with its rustic tasting room and lean, catlike bootlegger ride parked outside, but don’t let the weathered wood, antiques, and tin-tacker signs fool you. This place takes its spirits seriously – and if you do, too, it can become quite the classroom.

While we’re talking, a tourist in an outback hat wanders into the distilling room, holding a rocks glass wrapped in a cocktail napkin. He drawls in an accent I can’t quite place and says that the bartender told him to come back and “check out your shit.” Englehorn smiles and invites him into the conversation with a wave. World Whisky Day is, after all, more about the consumers than the distillers. When he mentions the net end result of all of the work that goes into the distilling process, the visitor halts him with an upturned palm. “What does that mean, bottle and bonded?”

“Bottled and bonded,” Englehorn says, “has a very specific meaning. It means produced entirely in one place, bottled by us in a single season, and then that’s aged for at least four years.” That, he explains, is what the term means, industry-wide.

But that’s just one glossed term in the whisky lexicon.

I’m not saying Englehorn should host courses in whisky appreciation – but he definitely could.

Another term you might want to know? Finishing.

“Finishing,” he says, “is when you take a whisky that’s been aged in its original, new barrel and transfer it late in the process to a new barrel that may have served another purpose.”

Like, for instance, the way Spirit Hound is currently working with Bee Squared apiary in a collaborative back-and-forth that is creating whisky-accented honey (putting a little more “old fashioned” on that Thomas’ old fashioned muffin) and honeyed barrels for finishing whisky. “What we do is, we give Bee Squared our whisky barrels and they age or condition their honey in the barrel,” says Englehorn. That, though, is only half of it. “They take that honey out, give us back the barrel, and then we finish a barrel of our whisky in that honeyed barrel.” But make no mistake: this is 100 percent whisky with a honey finish -- not the forty-proof “honey liqueur” you might find next to the bottles of the ol’ Kentucky labels.

“What we want,” he says of the honey collaboration “is innovation while appreciating and celebrating traditions in our own way. We are not,” he says, “focusing on the mass-produced.”

When I ask what else might be in store for Spirit Hound or what’s next on the horizon, the teacher smiles and says, “A drink.”

Here, I take it, endeth the lesson. Or maybe it’s just beginning.

IF YOU GO

Spirit Hound Distillers
4196 Ute Hwy. (U.S. 36)
Lyons, CO 80540
spirithounds.com
303-823-5696

Kyle Kirves drinks beer, plays guitar, runs trails, and manages projects – all with varying degrees of success. While not a craftsman himself, he is quite content writing about the Colorado artisans who create such wonderful things and memorable experiences.