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Fellow Drammers!
We’re delighted to welcome John Cooper, the co-founder of Dad’s Hat Pennsylvania Rye Whiskey on Thursday March 4th starting at 5pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern. We’ve of course long been interested in the history of rye in America — both the Baltimore style that our friends at Baltimore Spirits Company and Sagamore Spirit are bringing back to life, to the major historical Pennsylvania brands like Old Overholt and Michters. Although perhaps not precisely defined, it was understood that in the lead-up to prohibition in America, Pennsylvania style rye had a higher percentage of rye in the mash bill, whereas a Baltimore style rye featured more corn or wheat in the mash bill. That makes what Dad’s Hat is doing perfectly on point. Billed as the first distillery to produce rye whiskey in Pennsylvania since 1990 (something we’ll want to delve into at our event for sure), it focuses on a specific variety of Pennsylvania rye (“Monogahela-style”, 80%-rye, 15% barley malt, 5% malted rye, and obviously no corn). Apparently they formulated this recipe over a 2 year period working with the Artisan Distilling Program at Michigan State University to bring back a style of rye true to Pennsylvania’s rich rye-making history.
In fact, on a personal level, this particular style of rye was served in the bar owned by the Milhalich family, and Herman Milhalich (co-founder of Dad’s Hat along with our guest speaker) lived with his family in the apartment upstairs. When he and our guest speaker John Cooper read an article in 2006 about the rising popularity of rye whiskey, they set to work founding Mountain Laurel Spirits in 2011 in Bristol, PA. As a fun side note, they age their whiskey in smaller 15 gallon barrels (quarter casks) for 6 to 9 months, so this should also provide a great opportunity to discuss the merits of small vs. 53 gallons barrels..
We’ll be trying 5 expressions, and thanks to the generosity of the distillery, we’re able to provide this
Bottled in Bond 100 Proof. This has yet to his the market in the Northeast (maybe nationwide, we’ll have to ask) until at least April, so we’ll be getting a bit of a sneak peak on this.
Vermouth-Finished Rye. We actually went and tasted this in the days leading up to our FEW event as we pondered whether we wanted to buy a barrel of vermouth finished bourbon (which of course we did end up getting). To our knowledge, this is the only core-range vermouth-finished product in the market.
Port-Finished Rye.
Straight Rye 95 Proof
90 Proof Rye
Very much looking forward to this and delving into the history of the category and this particular historical style of rye. Only $10/person for Drammers Members and $20/person for Drammers Observers. A huge thank you to longtime friend and fellow Drammer Stephen Schuler for making this possible.