Good Deeds Spirits Launches Good Deeds Malt Whiskey
Good Deeds Spirits, a group set up with the intention of creating collaborative spirits releases with the goal of raising money to benefit important industry causes, has announced its first-ever release: Good Deeds Malt Whiskey, a malt whiskey blend from leading craft whiskey producers.
Good Deeds Malt Whiskey was created in February 2021 from a blend of nine donated whiskeys from Balcones Distilling (Waco, TX), Bently Heritage Estate Distillery (Minden, NV), FEW Spirits (Evanston, IL), Headframe Spirits (Butte, MT), Rogue Spirits Distillery (Newport, OR), Santa Fe Spirits (Santa Fe, NM), Sonoma Distilling Company (Rohnert Park, CA), State Line Distillery (Madison, WI), and Thornton Distilling Company (Thornton, IL). Fellow distilleries and industry suppliers including Saxco and Tapi further supported these efforts by donating bottles, closures, labels, and their expertise in an effort to contribute to Good Deeds Spirits’ cause.
Full barrel details for Good Deeds Malt Whiskey follow:
Balcones Distilling (Waco, TX)
- Ingredients: 100% Golden Promise malted barley, brewed with dry M1 & English Ale yeast.
- Distilling Notes: Double pot batch distilled in custom copper stills.
- Barrel Notes: 1st use Madeira Cask.
- Aging: 3 years, 219 days.
- Nerd Notes: The whiskey reflect the marrying of malt from a variety of cask maturations and slight peat hints finished together in Madeira.
Bently Heritage Estate Distillery (Minden, NV)
- Ingredients: 100% estate grown malted barley.
- Distilling Notes: Double distilled on Forsyth’s stills.
- Barrel Notes: STR (Spanish oak red wine, scraped, toasted, and recharred) barrel.
- Aging: 2 years.
- Nerd Notes: This will be the first whisky Bently Heritage has ever released.
FEW Spirits (Evanston, IL)
- Ingredients: 100% malted barley, some of which was smoked with cherry wood.
- Distilling Notes: Single pot distillation.
- Barrel Notes: Ex-Bourbon and ex-rye barrels.
- Aging: N/A
- Nerd Notes: The addition of the cherry wood adds a softer and sweeter smokey note that is balanced, and delicious.
Headframe Spirits (Butte, MN)
- Ingredients: 100% malted barley.
- Distilling Notes: Continuous Flow distilled.
- Barrel Notes: Ex Neversweat bourbon barrels and finished in Oloroso Sherry casks.
- Aging: 2 years.
- Nerd Notes: Headframe invented the still that made this whiskey and has sold the same still to 22 distilleries around the world.
Santa Fe Spirits (Santa Fe, NM)
- Ingredients: 100% 2-row malted barley, 1/3 of which was mesquite smoked.
- Distilling Notes: Double distilled on a hybrid column still.
- Barrel Notes: 1/3 in new American oak, medium char; 2/3 in used bourbon casks.
- Aging: 3 years.
- Nerd Notes: Strong enough to stand alone as a whiskey, but ‘plays nicely with others too’.
Rogue Spirits (Newport, OR)
- Ingredients: 60% 2-row barley, 20% cherrywood smoked malt, 20% alderwood smoke malt.
- Distilling Notes: Single pass distillation on a hybrid column still.
- Barrel Notes: Used char #3 barrel that previously held Dead Guy Whiskey.
- Aging: Ocean aged, 6 years.
- Nerd Notes: Made with smoked-by-hand alder and cherry wood. Rogue’s cooper, Nate, uses a home built smoker to impart a distinctive smoke flavor of the Pacific Northwest.
Sonoma Distilling (Rohnert Park, CA)
- Ingredients: 100% California grown, 2-row malted barley.
- Distilling Notes: Double distilled on a direct fired copper alembic still.
- Barrel Notes: Ex-Bourbon barrels.
- Aging: 4 years.
- Nerd Notes: Made with three types of yeasts (all fermented separately and blended prior to distilling); a traditional single malt yeast, an American whiskey yeast, and a California steam ale yeast.
State Line Distillery (Madison, WI)
- Ingredients: 100% Wisconsin malted barley.
- Distilling Notes: Double pot distilled.
- Barrel Notes: Ex-Bourbon barrels.
- Aging: 2 years.
- Nerd Notes: State Line’s first whiskey distilled, oldest whiskey on site.
Thornton Distilling (Thornton, IL)
- Ingredients: 100% American 2-row pale brewers malt, mashed and proofed with water from the distillery’s limestone-filtered artesian well dating back to the 1830s.
- Distilling Notes: Double pot distilled.
- Barrel Notes: One new, low-char barrel made from Minnesota oak; one freshly dumped ex-rye barrel.
- Aging: 2 years.
- Nerd Notes: This will be the first malt whiskey Thornton Distilling has ever released.
Triple Eight Distillery (Nantucket, MA) )
- Ingredients: 100% Maris Otter malted barley.
- Distilling Notes: Stripped on continuous flow still, spirit run done on hybrid column still.
- Barrel Notes: STR (Spanish oak red wine, scraped, toasted, and recharred) barrel.
- Aging: 5 years.
- Nerd Notes: Distiller Bryan Jennings’ stripping run on the column for this barrel took 2.5 plays through of the Harry Dean Stanton album “Partly Fiction.”
Blenders Johnny Jeffery (Bently Heritage Estate Distillery), Randy Hudson (Triple Eight Distillery), Reade Huddleston (Headframe Spirits), and John McKee (Headframe Spirits) created the blend over the course of two days in Butte, MT, then returned it to used Bourbon barrels to marry for five months before proofing down to 46% for bottling and release.
Good Deeds Malt Whiskey is described as having aromas of “dried apple, brûlée sugar, brown butter, toasted walnut, biscuit, hay, golden raisin, dried cherry, orange peel, and warming spice.” On the palate, it’s “silky, earthy, savory and dry,” with notes of “dried apple, dried cherry, heather, toasted brioche, toasted walnut, savory leather, black tobacco leaf, hay, caramel, singed cinnamon, and orange,” concluding with a “long” finish.
Good Deeds Malt Whiskey is limited to 1,000 bottles and will be available exclusively via Seelbachs beginning on October 15th. It carries a retail price of $75.00, with 100% of the proceeds to benefit STEPUP Foundation, the diversity and inclusion initiative founded by the American Craft Spirits Association (ACSA).
Photo credit: Headframe Spirits.
Source: Good Deeds Spirits.