Newsletter No. 8
Eighteen-months into production, we now have over 230 barrels aging in the barrel house. Once the spirit is in the barrel it generally needs no additional maintenance - it sits idly, getting older, and generally better as well. There is one technique, however, we employ in our barrel house to add a layer of complexity and consistency to our whiskey. This techniques is called “marrying.”
More common in wine-making, and among French brandy distillers, to marry a whiskey is to bring multiple barrels from the same distillery together into one batch (As opposed to “blending,” which is to combine together barrels from different distilleries). Marrying typically happens prior to bottling by default, as it’s not efficient to bottle one barrel at a time. But some distilleries marry barrels during the aging process as well, and then redistribute the married whiskey back into the original barrels. The practice is time consuming, and labor intensive, but makes for a more layered and nuanced spirit as the individual flavor profiles of each barrel come together into a harmonious whole. It also creates more consistency in the whiskey, tempering barrel-by-barrel variations.
In late-July we married ten of our older barrels. We intend to continue this practice on or around each barrel’s 18 month anniversary. Though we will not marry all of our barrels - a selection of barrels with unique flavor profiles or of sentimental importance have been earmarked and set aside for single-barrel release.
We completed our third successful harvest this July, though not without incident (more on that later). We harvested 38 acres, yielding 75,000 pounds of rye and 21,000 pounds of barley. The rye harvest - made up of two different varietals, Danko and Hazlet - will meet nearly all of our rye whiskey distilling needs for the coming year. The barley will be used primarily for the barley portion of our rye mashbill, with the remainder going to our single malt.
Looking at the math of our operation, we yielded approximately 2500 pounds of grain per acre. This is an average yield for an organic grain farm, though we had several factors working against us this year that depressed our yields overall. As mentioned in Newsletter No. 7, lodging impacted a portion of our fields, and those portions were generally unharvestable. Additionally, herds of deer graze on the fields throughout the late-fall and winter when our grain is in early stages of growth. Between the lodging and the deer-induced crop loss, we estimate our yields were 10%-15% lower this year than they otherwise would have been.
Deer damage crops and decrease yields for sure, but they cause other unpredictable damage as well. While harvesting our largest rye field our combine harvester suffered two flat tires. Combine harvesters do not come with spare tires in the trunk, but with PJ Trowbridge’s unmatched resourcefulness - worth a newsletter series of its own - and a helping hand (or, wheel, in this case) from our friends at Ooms Farm down the road, we were able to implement a makeshift repair and get the combine back in action and the harvest completed.
We were curious as to what hazard punctured two heavy-duty tractor tires - the larger of which is six feet in diameter with 1/2-inch thick reinforced rubber. We suspected metal debris, perhaps, that washed over the bordering stream bank, or an errant fence post with nails exposed.
The tire repair service identified the actual culprit - a deer antler. Deer shed their antlers each winter and regrow them the next year. Apparently the phenomenon of farm-tire-puncture-by-antler is not uncommon, and a field of newly green rye where deer graze for hours is a likely place for an antler to drop.
Samascott’s Corn Maze. Opening Saturday, September 7th, 2024 at 11am. Regular hours: Open daily September - October, 11:00am - last entry 4:00 pm. Samascott's Garden Market, Kinderhook. https://www.samascott.com/cornmaze
Climate Carnival 2024. Saturday, September 14, 11:00 am - 3:00 pm. Columbia County Fairgrounds, Chatham. https://climatesmart.columbiacountyny.com/climate-carnival
15th Annual Chatham Area Farm Tour. Saturday, September 21, 10:00 am - 4:00 pm. https://columbialand.org/event/chatham-area-farm-tour/
30th Annual Capital Apple and Wine Festival. Saturday, September 28 and Sunday, September 29, 10:00 am - 5:00 pm. Columbia County Fairgrounds, Chatham. https://www.starbirdevents.com/capital-apple-and-wine-festival
3rd Annual Mini Renaissance Faire. Sunday, September 29, 2:00 pm - 5:00 pm. Kinderhook Memorial Library. https://kinderhooklibrary.org/event/third-annual-mini-renaissance-faire/
We hope you enjoyed our free newsletter. Be sure to subscribe and please share with a friend if you think they would enjoy it as well. For more information about Silver Brothers, visit silverbrothers.com and follow us on Instagram @silverbrotherswhiskey.