Foreign

Wood Hat Twin Timbers

Wood Hat Spirits was founded in 2012 by Gary Hinegardner. It is so named from one of Gary’s non-distilling hobbies: carving wooden hats. When not carving a wide variety of those hats, Gary and his team are creating bourbons and whiskies made using Missouri sources, from the wooden barrels to the grains using the only wood-fired still in the United States. While the offerings explore a wide variety of corn varietals, the creativity can also be seen in finishes. The Wood Hat Twin Timbers begins as their Rubenesque bourbon made of blue corn that is at least two years old, but then finished in charred pecan barrels, providing both oak and pecan to have voice in the whiskey.

By Adam | August 20, 2022 | Foreign | No Comments |

Branch & Barrel Distilling was founded in 2015 by friends Ryan Morgan, Scott Freund and Tom Sielaff after years of aging new make whiskey with different woods. One of them was wood from a plum tree, and was perhaps the one that finally pushed them into getting the distillery off the ground for real. The base spirit is a bourbon mash with high barley but some of their offerings are not aged in virgin oak barrels and thus do not meet the regulatory requirements to call it bourbon. The Branch & Barrel Plumwood is matured entirely in plum wood barrels and made in very small batches.

By Adam | August 10, 2022 | Foreign | No Comments |

Westward was founded in 2004 by Christian Krogstad, the early days of American craft distilling. While inspired by elder whiskies such as scotch, Westward also is a proponent of exploration, where according to their website they “brew like a pale ale, distill like a single malt, and age like a bourbon.” Their whiskey is made using an American pale ale brew that is then distilled twice before being aged in charred new American oak barrels. The Westward American Single Malt is their flagship offering and the foundation for their other whiskies, which often have some kind of creative cask finishing.

By Adam | July 20, 2022 | Foreign | No Comments |