There are spirits and then there are spirits
It can also be used as a solvent or added to the gasoline in your car to “fortify” it. (Mainly, it provides subsidies for farmers since its value as a fuel additive is far less than the cost of producing it.)
But Koval makes spirits for human consumption, and wonderful spirits they are—twenty-six different products ranging from clear whiskies made from five different grains to spirits in a light or dark form depending on the barrels they were aged in to some of the most exquisite liqueurs you’ve ever had cross your jaded palate.
How spirits are made
To gain a feel for the painstaking care that goes into the preparation of a whisky or liqueur you really need to take the Koval Distillery tour. You’ll see samples of the original grains that are the beginnings of the distillation process. In Koval’s case, they use wheat, oats, rye, millet[i] and spelt.[ii] Starting with a mash and an enzyme boost[iii] Next, distillation to extract the ethanol from the resulting mash. Finally, some of the finished product is placed into barrels to age while batches are bottled as clear whisky similar to vodka. The extent to which an ageing barrel is charred determines to a large extend whether the finished whisky will be light in color or dark. Koval uses no artificial coloring in any of its products. Liqueurs are produced from clear whisky by the addition of flavorings such as ginger or rose hips.
Although the preceding explanation takes only a paragraph to describe, the actual details involved are numerous and critical to producing a quality product. For example, each time the pot still is utilized it produces essentially three kinds of ethanol termed the head, hearts and tail. The head is produced first and is pretty nasty stuff that smells like nail polish remover. In fact, heads are often sold to cosmetic firms for just that purpose. The hearts are what you are really after and constitute the most desirable portion of the run. The tails follow the hearts, are not as offensive as the heads, but are not as desirable as the hearts. The ability to distinguish between these three parts of a still’s output is not something that can be “automatically” or mechanically determined. It takes a skilled Master Distiller to actually take samples of a still’s output to determine when the stop collecting heads and start collecting hearts and so forth.
Touring Koval
If you’ve never thought about how spirits are distilled you’re in for some surprises. The equipment used is somewhat exotic, like the two thousand liter pot still with a whiskey helmet pictured here, or the five hours it takes to distil the contents of a three hundred liter pot still.
The tour covers all parts of the steps needed to produce a product for sale, not just the distilling process described above. Following distillation and warehousing (in the case of aged whiskies) there next comes bottling, labeling, packaging and distribution. For some of the liqueurs a certain amount of labor is required to prepare the fruits and flavorings used in the production process. In fact, when Koval makes Ginger Liqueur they often ask for volunteers via their Facebook page who help in the preparation of the ginger root used to produce the liqueur. In return for volunteer services the ginger-peelers might get a gift t-shirt emblazoned with the Koval logo.
More On Koval
To see a little bit more about Koval Distillery, visit Wandering Lion—Koval Distillery Tour. There you will find a Google Map of the Koval Distillery, a link to some photos I took of the distillery during the tour and a link to the Koval website that contains more details about history, products and tours.
For anyone with an interest in high-quality spirits, Koval is a must-see in the next time you’re in Chicago.
[i] Millet is a small-seeded or cereal grain that grows in difficult conditions of low moisture.
[ii] Spelt is an ancient grain, closely related to wheat, that paleobiologists now believe may have been widely cultivated by the Chinese even before rice became a staple of the Eastern diet.
[iii] Koval does not malt its grains the way a brewer does. Malting requires heat to stop the germination process and heat, according to Koval’s founder Robert Birnecker, would damage the distinctive and characteristic flavors of the individual grains.
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