How Malt Shaped America's Early Whiskey Identity
Whiskey is distilled beer. There’s a line that runs across Europe above which people brewed beer and distilled it into whiskey. Below it, people fermented grapes into wine and distilled that into brandy. Maybe a little reductive, but stay with me…
Distillation’s first records in Europe come from the 1400s, and in those days, most beers were brewed with barley, especially malted barley, which are barley seeds that have been allowed to germinate, but not yet sprout. These malted grains were different from dormant grains and had enzymes which could convert starch to sugar, a requirement to produce alcohol.
Malt, then, became a crucial ingredient in the spirits of northern Europe, coming to define whiskeys from scotland, and some whiskeys from Ireland. When distillation moved to the United States, corn and rye grew better in the new world and while malt was used for its enzymatic properties, it was always a small component of the grain bill or mash bill.
Later, as beer surpassed whiskey as the tipple of choice for a wider audience, barley growing launched in the United States, especially in the mountain west and Pacific northwest. American brewers thrived in the western United States, where climatic conditions were more like Europe than was the case on the east coast. Rocky mountain water? Yes, and good conditions for barley.
Prohibition and the Reset of American Spirits
American distilling was severely hobbled by Prohibition, and returned more slowly and more industrially than beer, which was easier to make quickly. By the 1980s, only a dozen or so industrial distilleries were making spirits, mostly bourbon and maybe a day or two of rye each year. Stylistically, these were American whiskeys, new barrel (oak forward), corn- or rye-based, and column distilled. Whiskey as a category, had been slowly declining since a peak in the 1960s.
As Americans turned to the wild multicolored vodka cocktails of the 1980s and 1990s, scotch whiskey was going through its own evolution. While branded blends of whiskeys from several distilleries had been the leading export for generations, some very devoted scotch drinkers began to pursue single malts: malt whiskeys from a single distillery, and generally more flavorful and funky than their blended peers.
Single malts set an interesting precedent for American enthusiasts. Bourbon drinkers liked the idea of single origin bourbon, but by the turn of the year 2000 there were only a handful of industrial distillers left and their products weren’t especially differentiated by distillery (most produced similar mash bills, same cooperage, same aging conditions. Single barrels stood out because the distilleries and their recipes weren’t especially interesting until on rare occasions, a barrel had found some magic. Barrels were the source of inspiration, not distillers or processes.
A New Generation of Distillers
Yet, some—especially of a younger generation—decided that American whiskey could be more. And rather than trying to replicate bourbon, many of them went after the world standard: malt whiskey. By this point what had been a scotch (and Irish) phenomenon started to travel to Belgium and Germany, New Zealand and Australia—and even England. And let’s not forget Japanese whiskey, perhaps the oldest of the not-scotch scotch-inspired whiskeys, was earning a reputation even more vaunted than the scotch it had been cribbing for almost a hundred years.
These new American distillers left bourbon to its existing partisans, who were after bottle trophies more than flavor or character, and went after the kind of drinker that had buoyed craft beer all along. This craft-oriented drinker, the thinking went, knew barley and had good taste and would go along for the ride with the distillers one what was most interesting to them.
American Malt Takes Root
American single malt, then emerged from a number of west coast (primarily, but not exclusively) distillers. Stranahan’s, probably the first of these to market, began with a beer based sourced in the early days from a nearby brewery. Other malt-forward whiskeys came along, with Balcones earning high and deserved praise for its Texas single malt. Clear Creek (Portland, OR) and St. George (Bay Area, CA), two of the oldest and original craft distillers in the country had always made malt whiskey alongside liqueurs and fruit brandies. Over time other heavy hitters Westland and Westward joined the party as well as exceptional smaller distilleries like Andalusia in TX or Venus spirits in CA.
This new category of whiskeys was easy to identify in a broad sense, but harder to precisely define. And TTB, the agency that regulates alcohol labels and taxes distillers had no clear bucket for all these new whiskeys. TTB had two close categories, malt whiskey (from a mash of at least 51% malt, aged in a new barrel) and whiskey from a malt mash (a mash of at least 51% malt but aged in used or uncharred cooperage). Neither of these were particularly useful to the consumer was much more accustomed to malt liquor, a kind of cheap fortified beer often sold in 40oz bottles—a very different product and purpose.
The Fight for Definition
“Single Malt” as a moniker, was better understood by American audiences, if more by reputation than particulars. And so a coalition was created in 2016, but formed by its member-distillers who all had a stake in promoting a viable alternative to American Bourbon and Rye that spoke to the excellence of our rising class of new distillers and suited their international ambitions. Led by Steve Hawley from Westland as a tenacious booster for the cause, the American Single Malt Whiskey Commission (ASMWC) began to advocate for a change to the Federal rules.
That process would last more than 8 years, until December 18, 2024, now known as Ratification Day for the American Single Malt Whiskey Commission.
The new regulations specify that an American Single Malt must be mashed from 100% malted barley, distilled at a single U.S. distillery below 160 proof (to ensure a whiskey profile vs. more neutral spirits distilled at higher proof), matured in oak barrels up to 700 liters, and like all whiskeys, must be bottled at 80 proof or more.
A Category Finding Its Audience
Now, more than a year after ratification, the category is out in the world and on its own. Most estimates place the category at about 100,000 9L cases, substantially less than bourbon’s estimated 50 million cases or rye’s 1.5 million cases. Boosters, and I count myself among them, say it’s the fastest growing category, which is an easy enough assertion with rye and bourbon slowing. And in the mid 2000s, American rye’s numbers were very similar only to see the category expand by a factor of 10, charting a potential course for the category.
With spirits outlooks more mediated, American Single Malt faces a slightly uncertain future. Many who believed in its promise have had to face the reality that bourbon is still the dominant category in American whiskey, and most bourbon buyers don’t have a particular affinity for craft.
That may leave a pretty large opening for American Single Malt, which in almost every instance is unquestionably craft. Bulleit and Woodford Reserve have both released mainstream versions of the category, though neither have pulled focus from the core producers, even as they have lended some legitimacy to the category.
A New Expression of Malt Whiskey
With so much of American whiskey in flux right now, American Single Malt is both a creator and a beneficiary of industry change. But in the case of American Single Malt, that change was mostly driven by distillers, not drinkers. Now the people will have their say. The commentariat have said there were already great single malts before Americans got the game. But the whiskeys I’ve tasted are strong, and I have a lot of pride in our own single malt (a lightly peated, used barrel variant).
Perhaps what is missing from the broad discussion is flavor.
The problem with scotch, to be blunt, is that it tastes like scotch. It’s dry, herbaceous, complex. Its ubiquity in the modern era has more to do with cultural imperialism of an older era than taste. American Single Malt is a nascent category and it’s difficult to define broadly, but in my view, it tends to be a little sweeter, a little richer, and maybe more singular. As global palates have shifted, maybe that is the winning direction. If Japanese offered a cleaner, more precise take on scotch, maybe American Single Malt is that, but add a touch of sweetness and body. That could very well be a paradigm-shifting sweet spot for world whiskey.
