American Rye whiskey | 63.3% ABV

Score: 6/10

**Good stuff.**
***TL;DR***
*A unique approach to an intense, flavourful American rye*

Whisky and coffee parallels

I have a bit of a confession. For the last six months or so my whisky fascination has taken a back seat and a new one has developed. Bit by bit, the coffee bug has taken hold and now I’m deep down the rabbit hole.

Sometime last autumn I got it in my head that we needed a better coffee grinder for the house. I took my wife out to dinner and gave her the sales pitch. Our $10 slappy choppy spinny blade grinder wasn’t cutting it anymore. Let’s spend a few hundred dollars on an attractive new, single purpose household appliance and our lives will be forever changed for the better.

It may have been just my good looks, or maybe my well polished Oxfords, but it worked. A few days later, with a new machine on the counter, I started buying nice coffee beans, chatting with local baristas to get tips from the pros, and soon I was making manual V60 pour-overs every morning.

Now three grinders deep, I’ve collected other accoutrements as well: a fancy PID temperature-controlled electric pouring kettle and a purpose built coffee scale for weighing water and beans as well as timing my brews.

My wife enjoys the fruits of her initial investment and humours me when I give her the tasting notes and ask her how she enjoyed today’s brew, but otherwise she still glugs a Nespresso from time to time (swamp water that I have since declared beneath me).

The purchase of a second grinder was a tougher sell. For the third I didn’t even bother discussing, I just turned to the rest of my family and milked my upcoming milestone birthday.

The whisky-to-coffee jump is an easy one to make for those that like to get lost in production details and tasting notes, as there are many parallels.

It starts with farming. What plant varietals to grow and where; geography, climate, altitude, shade or sun all have an impact on the flavours contained within the seed of the coffee tree’s fruit.

The next flavour modifier in the chain is processing. I like to think of coffee processing like fermentation and distillation in whisky. Coffee beans are actually the seeds of a fruit (commonly called the coffee cherry). The flesh of the fruit needs to be removed and the seeds dried to an appropriate level of moisture content. Coffee cherries are processed using various techniques, the most common two being washed and natural processes. Extended fermentations and whatnot aside, it is mainly down to whether the seeds are dried on their own with pulp and mucilage removed, which lends to a cleaner more traditional coffee taste, or dried with the cherry intact, which can impart more funky fruit flavours to the bean.

Roasting coffee is akin to the whisky ageing process. This is where the raw green coffee beans are sculpted into something capable of producing a tasty beverage. Good roasters try to highlight as much of the origin and varietal characteristics as possible, walking a knife edge between too green and too much roast flavour. A common view I’ve read in content from a few top roasters is that all raw beans have an inherent level of quality based on the plant itself and how they are grown and processed. Quality can’t be added during the roasting process, only modified to suit the roaster’s taste. Quite simply put, good beans make good coffee. Where have I heard these sentiments before?

Unlike whisky, there is an additional step. Preparation of the coffee for consumption is up to the user - brewing at home or in a cafe. Percolation, immersion, or espresso, whatever your pick it all comes down to extracting just the right amount of the bean into your cup. Too little extraction and the brew can be overly sour, too much and bitterness and astringency take over.

Like whisky, an easy way to judge the quality of the roasted coffee you buy is by the amount of information and disclosure on the label. Quality coffee will always come with a roast date on the bag - not a best before date. When buying single origin coffee (parallels to single malt/grain anyone?) most good roasters will also include details like region, varietal, altitude, harvest date, processing method, and usually three or four flavour descriptors. For supply chain transparency, some even include the price paid to the farmer and distributor, and even landed price and roasting cost.

For my fortieth birthday this past May, my wonderful wife planned a celebratory weekend getaway for us to New York City. Many of our plans were kept as a surprise, but I did have one request: to spend a day in Brooklyn for a stop at world famous and currently quite trendy coffee roaster, Sey.

After that we’d go for a tour of the Kings County Distillery.

Review

King’s County Rye Whiskey, 80% Rye, 20% Malted barley (Golden Promise), 4 years old, 63.3% ABV
£115 (US$150)

The Kings County Distillery tour was rather unremarkable, but a nice experience nonetheless. While very likeable and charming, our tour guide had trouble staying on topic and had a few comments of questionable validity. Not being the type to put anyone on the spot, even in our small group, I asked a few questions in an attempt to steer certain topics and conclusions, but the conversation didn’t really go anywhere insightful or thought provoking.

From my brief walk around their setup, it appears that Kings County triple distill their whiskeys, but the guide disagreed with me on that and I didn’t challenge. I could be wrong, but the way he described it, they do one stripping run in a still shaped like a big horizontal steel cylinder, followed by one spirit run in each of two pot stills. To me that is triple distillation, but I could be mistaken on the specifics.

My wife delayed the start of the tour significantly by beelining to pet one of the distillery cats - we were advised not to try and pet the second one. After the tour we tasted a few whiskeys, our tour guide was very accommodating and pulled extra bottles down from shelves on request to offer a small taste. The peated rye stood out, and I decided to purchase the rather pricey bottle - it was my birthday after all.

This whiskey is 80% rye and 20% peated barley malt, mashed together and double or triple distilled, depending on whether you count the first distillation. The malt component is Scottish Golden Promise, peated in Scotland, and the whiskey is aged four years.

For my final tasting session of this rye, I brewed a cup of the Ethiopian coffee we picked up while at Sey in Brooklyn to sip alongside. High altitude grown and processed via the washed method, an unspecified indigenous Ethiopian variety (or likely a mix - Ethiopia is the birthplace of all coffee after all, with too many natural varietals to count). My weapon of choice for this brew was the aeropress with a long steeping phase, which was what they were using at the roaster’s cafe when we visited. Notes are for both the whiskey and the coffee side by side, but the score is just for the whiskey.

Nose

At over 60% ABV some air time does it good. Red. Red candy. Neon red marachinos. Good oak and sweet heavy florals. Some chocolate and malt, Maltesers if you will, it’s rich and warm. Dark wood and dark leather in a dark room with a smouldering fireplace in the corner.

Palate

An explosion of flavour and oak reminiscent of heavier Texas whiskeys. Gasoline, mocha, red fruit, and a long mouth watering finish that leaves some menthol or anise candies lingering on the tongue. It attacks the sides of the tongue mostly, in a bit of pucker. The peated barley is almost imperceptible and may exist just a slight seasoning spice in the middle palate to the finish.

The coffee tastes of watermelon and oolong for sure, that much I can take from the roaster’s notes. I’m having difficulty picking out the suggested stone fruits but there’s a good dose of milk chocolate and a nice silky body reminiscent of clarified butter. Going back to the whiskey, the coffee pairing brings out a mellower side. It mutes the fruit and brings forward some astringency, but there’s a deeper, rich chocolate sensation and some added chalkiness with the sharp edges smoothed by the coffee still on my tongue. Mostly, the comparison is an exercise in textures. Silky coffee meets pointy rye, each one priming the palate for the other. As the coffee cools, the acidity emerges a little more, perhaps with the suggestion of under-ripe plum. Fantastic.

Score: 6/10 AMc

Bonus Review

King’s County Coffee Whiskey, A blend of American whiskey and cold brew coffee, 40% ABV
£15 (US$20)

At the distillery they also had this curiosity, which is some - as the tour guide put it - “value whisky” directly blended with cold brew coffee. Given my topic today, this is deserving of an (unscored) bonus review.

Nose

Coffee and some generic whiskey scents - pretty much what you’d expect. Vanilla, caramel, barrel. Cold brew.

Palate

Drinks quite a bit harsher than 40%, and it seems like the coffee brings out more astringency in the whiskey. The typical Play-Doh I find in a lot of craft whiskies is here big time. Stale cold brew coffee - bitter. I commend them for not adding sugar, but perhaps it would have been better with some added sweetness.

The Dregs

The rye is a belter. I like the barley malt heavy, two grain, 80/20 approach to mashbills that is used by the distillery, eschewing rye in their bourbon and corn in their rye.

I find whisky and coffee have a good interplay in general. The tasting combination is something I could see myself enjoying more often on the odd Saturday afternoon. This particular pairing allows access to another angle on the rye, smoothing out the sharpness and allowing access to an experience that otherwise wouldn’t be.

Score: 6/10

Tried this? Share your thoughts in the comments below. AMc

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