You don't need a history degree to get American single malt. But it wouldn't hurt.
Before the United States even went by that name, the Cherokee and other indigenous tribes made their booze out of fermented plants and berries. Early European settlers used rye, which grew like a weed on the East Coast and imparted delicious flavors of spice to liquor. As Europeans moved westward, they grew corn — another wonderful crop for distilling and drinking. And let’s not forget to mention rum, made cheaply out of molasses down in the Caribbean.
This all relegated malted barley, an essential ingredient of single malt whiskey, to second fiddle in North America. American barley production lagged behind corn, rye and other distillable crops like wheat until the Pacific Northwest was settled and agricultured by whites. And even then, once malted barley was being cultivated in the ground, it was snapped right up by another interested party — beer distillers.
As a result, our forefathers were raised on bourbon, rye whiskey, corn liquor, rum and, of course, beer. (That last beverage, made from barley, was extremely important as an alternative to water back when the latter wasn’t so dependably safe.) But the rest of the world, especially Scotland, didn’t let good malted barley slip between the cracks. Over hundreds of years, the Scots learned that malted barley could be roasted in a certain manner — often using peat smoke — then mashed and distilled to create a spirit that is smoky, cereal-y, fruity and, above all, smooth and long in flavor.
Perhaps because of Scottish, and later Japanese, dominance of the spirit, single malts didn’t come to be made in America until a few domestic examples arose in the 1980s and 1990s. Those whiskeys, like Clear Creek Distillery's McCarthy’s Single Malt and others, planted a barley seed that’s been growing ever since. Today, more than 200 distillers are making the stuff — more than in all of Scotland — and the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, part of the US Department of the Treasury, now stands on the cusp of declaring an official designation for “American single malt.”
“We have a great opportunity to push the boundaries and explore single malt more than ever before,” says Steve Hawley, formerly of Westland Distillery. In 2016, Hawley and a handful of other distillers founded the American Single Malt Whiskey Commission, which sought to define the style. “When we first started calling our whiskey ‘American single malt’ at Westland,” Hawley says, “nobody knew what shelf to put it on in the liquor store.”
Hawley and the ASMWC, which has ballooned in size in recent years, were delighted when the TTB used much of their own definition in the semi-official “standard of identity” for American single malt. These current definitions for American single malt are somewhat simple:
- Made at a single distillery
- Uses 100 percent barley mash bill
- Mashed, distilled and matured entirely in the US
- Matured in oak casks not larger than 700 liters
- Distilled to no more than 160 proof
- Bottled at 80 proof or more
This varies from Scottish regulations, which require an age statement of at least three years and the use of a pot still for distillation. For American distilleries like Balcones in Texas, whose whiskeys gain flavor much faster during the temperature-intense aging process, Hawley and others argue an age statement is stifling. And rather than narrow their definition to the pot still, the ASMWC argues that American distillers are known for their hybrid-style stills — and that a maximum distillation proof serves the same purpose as requiring pot stills.
“The reason we were excited to join the ASMWC and set out these definitions was to get people some sort of understanding about what the hell we were doing with our whiskey,” says Miles Munroe, master blender at Westward Whiskey. “We needed to give the whiskey drinker an idea of the category. No, it’s not bourbon, it’s single malt. Then everyone thinks, ‘Oh, Scotch, smoky, peaty.’ Well, no, not that, either.”
“The American whiskey category was synonymous with bourbon fifteen years ago but the resurgence of rye diversified that view,” says Gareth Moore, CEO of Virginia Distillery, whose Courage & Conviction whiskey has been draped in a number of awards since its release in 2020. “The American single malt category will further broaden the view of the American whiskey consumer.”
Tyler Pederson, the distillery manager at Westland Distillery, recalls a drinker telling him he didn’t like whiskey ... only bourbon. “Education is a huge part of what we need to do, and it’s what we’re doing by formally creating an American single malt category,” he says. “The designation is a way to protect the global consumer and tell them what to expect out of an American single malt. At the same time, we don’t want to limit the innovation that Americans are known for.”
So what exactly are Americans known for in their single malt? Well, that’s still wildly variable, depending on the distillery. In fact, a few of the distillers I spoke with weren’t waiting on the TTB definition of ASM. They’ve already begun defining their own place in history.
St. George Distillery
In 1997, Lance Winters showed up to St. George Spirits in Alameda, California, with a plea and a bottle of single malt. He wanted a job. He was a brewer, and a friend had given him a bottle of Lagavulin. “Once I realized the first step of making single malt whiskey was making beer, I thought, ‘Shit, I’m halfway there,’” he says. He distilled his beer into a single malt in his garage. “I figured getting a job was better than going to the federal penitentiary for illegal moonshining,” he says.
He got the job. At the time, he only knew of two other single malts being made in America. To his eye, both were using peated barley to make, basically, a domestic version of Scotch. “I said, look, we’re not bound by the rules of single malt that exist in Scotland, so let’s make this our very own thing,” Winters says.
He knew from his home distilling about how different roast levels on the barley translated to the spirit; distill down a porter or stout and it’ll retain some of its chocolate and coffee notes as a whiskey, for example. He also knew that different yeast strains could be used to catalyze whole different swaths of esters, phenols and other flavorful molecules out of the malted barley. Whereas Scottish distillers often use a single strain of distiller’s yeast called M-strain, and other American distillers were mostly concerned with translating sugars into ethanol efficiently, Winters saw an opportunity to experiment. He created a mash bill of 100 percent barley — made up of two-row pale, crystal, black patent and Bamberg malts, roasted to different levels.
“This was to showcase the different flavor profiles present in barley,” he says. “Before the whiskey even hit the barrel, it had so much depth and layers to it, tons of flavor and aroma.” This became St. George’s flagship American single malt.
Another of their whiskeys, Baller, is an homage to Japanese single malt.
“Our friends opened a ramen shop,” Winters says. “We fell in love with this big, porky bowl of ramen. We realized the best counterpoint to that was a highball.” A Hibiki highball is no hardship for anybody, of course. “But these are our friends!” Winters says. They narrowed their mash bill to two-row pale and Munich malts (“super lean, austere, almost Japanese in style”), aged it in American oak, ran it through maple charcoal (“for a big, sweet, smoky punch”), then finished it for six months in barrels that had previously held their own homemade Japanese stonefruit shochu, Ume.
When I asked my local liquor store guy about American single malt, he pointed to Baller: “Special bottle. Less than $70. What else do you want?” Not much — Baller is downright delicious, and it's entirely unlike any other single malt out there.
“We love overly complex things,” Winters told me. “If it’s too easy, then anybody can do it." Or somebody already has.
This is a main concern of Winters for the future of ASM. “There are a lot of people who think if they just go through the motions, good whiskey is going to happen. Whiskey happens, but not good whiskey.” He noted a blind tasting several years ago of 20-some whiskies. “Of those, there were only three that I would actually drink … the rest of them, they need a better editor.” American single malt makers need to be their own worst critics. “Make sure the product going out is truly delicious,” Winters says. “That’s the way forward.”
Westland Distillery
Westland, which laid down its first barrels of single malt in 2011, is one of the most recognizable and award-winning American single malt producers. Tyler Pederson has been at the distillery for 10 years, having worked his way up from a mashman to head distiller, production manager and now distillery manager.
“I came to Westland because I wanted to make whiskey with a sense of place,” he says. That sense of place depends on the Pacific Northwest’s excellent malt-grade barley. “The Skagit Valley is one of the top five barley-growing regions in the world,” Pederson says. Cool temperatures and heavy rainfall make for plump barley that’s low in protein. “From a raw materials perspective, making single malt just made sense,” he adds.
Westland uses a five-barley mash bill fermented using Belgian saison yeast. (“Less efficient, but I love the fruity ester character that comes off it, and the phenolic notes provide a nice backdrop for the grain.”) They age the whiskey in new American oak; according to Pederson, the lighter-style spirit can stand up to new oak’s bold tannin flavors because of the Skagit Valley’s gentle temperature fluctuations throughout the year.
Lately, Westland’s flavors also depend on a local peat bog. “In our mind, using peat is the root style of modern single malt,” he says. “If you need to dry your barley out in the field, that’s what you would use.” At first, Westland imported Scottish peat to smoke their barley; then, using Google Maps, they located a peat bog nearby. Many are strictly protected by the EPA, but this one, which supplied the local Air Force base with peat as an absorbent agent, had been grandfathered into harvesting. In Scotland, peat bogs are often drained for harvesting; this one remains wetted while a backhoe harvests the peat straight from the primordial muck, a more sustainable technique.
A local malthouse, Skagit Valley Malting, has built (and rebuilt) a system to smoke the malt with this peat. Changing processes are reflected in Westland’s smokiest whiskey, Solum; the 2016 batch, which used pelletized peat, was “very lightly smoky,” while a new release blends the 2016 with a much smokier version from 2019 that used powdered peat.
Not everybody loves peated whiskey; perhaps that’s why there are so few American single malts that use peat, let alone source it locally. “Some people say certain Islay whiskies smell like a burning hospital in a glass,” Pederson admits. “It’s more a niche element of whiskey drinkers that like it. You have to be bold to go down this path. But by no means are we the only ones.”
More innovation lies ahead for Westland. They fully fund a PhD program with Washington State University’s Breadlab, aimed at developing new barley varieties in the Skagit Valley, specifically in low-input, organic systems designed to be used for whiskey.
“We’re excited for the work the farmers are doing here, and for the flavors inherently around us,” Pederson says.
Tenmile Distillery
In 1990, when Shane Fraser was 16 years old, he got a job as a “dogsbody” — a day laborer — at Royal Lochnagar distillery in Scotland, just down the road from where he grew up. He went on to work at Oban, Glenfarclas and Wolfburn, a new distillery in the north of Scotland where he was given free rein as master distiller to make a Scotch whiskey in his own style.
In 2019, he immigrated to New York to make single malt in America. “I always wanted to challenge myself by working abroad,” he told me recently. “And there are advantages to making whiskey here — for instance, there’s no pressure on the amount of whiskey we make.”
This pressure-free distillery is Tenmile, located in the Hudson Valley 90 miles north of New York City. Founder John Dyson opened it with the dream of making a Scottish-style American single malt.
Fraser laid down a first batch of 300-odd barrels in 2019 and the work has continued apace. His recipe uses 100 percent malted barley grown within 40 miles of the distillery, floor malted at Hudson Valley Malt. He pre-mills it in the Scottish style: 20 percent husk, 10 percent meal, the rest flour. He mashes it just like he did in Scotland, to a sweet-tea darkness, cooled down low and fermented slowly until “the yeast comes back to life and produces a lovely flavor.” He distills it in traditional Scottish Forsyths stills. John Dyson, Tenmile’s owner, also owns Williams Selyem Winery in California, so Fraser has great access to high-end pinot noir and chardonnay barrels. He also ages the liquid in ex-Jack Daniel’s whiskey barrels and oloroso sherry casks, and even ex-Islay casks. “Our whiskey is unpeated, and I’m not into heavily smoked whiskey,” he says. “But when we use those, the spirit pulls the smokiness out of the wood.”
All of this sounds a lot like Speyside or a light Highland whisky. So how exactly is making whiskey in America different than in Scotland?
“I’ve got more input into the grain,” Fraser says. “In Scotland, you buy from a big malt house, and here we work directly with the growers. Also, here we are trying to produce a great single malt, but without pressure from shareholders.” Scale also differs. “In Scotland, the large distilleries are trying to be in every bar in the world. When you’re talking about making small tweaks, it’s being made to ten million bottles.”
The lack of a specific still requirement in the American definition is another big difference. “You’re going to have such a wide spectrum of flavors from the different distilleries. It’s so young. I think everybody is trying to do their own thing.”
Tenmile’s single malt is already gaining acclaim as a great Scottish-style whiskey, made in America. “On the nose, it’s quite a lot of spice and some fruits,” Fraser says. “Taste: a cinnamon note, Christmas cake flavors, almost like a Speyside sherry malt — though we use wine casks. For a young whiskey, at three years old, it’s got a pretty long finish.”
Speaking of a long finish, Fraser’s holding on to plenty of stock for the future. “Hopefully, we’ll eventually have a big eight- or ten-year-old version,” he says.
Few Spirits
“We see ourselves as artists, trying to bottle liquid art,” says Paul Hletko, founder of Few Spirits. The Chicago-based distillery has been making American single malt with a “grain-to-glass” approach for a little over 12 years.
The outsider feel of ASM feels just right at Few. Employees include former and current musicians, woodworkers, ballet dancers and cooks. Hletko, a self-professed “stinky hippie, raging Deadhead and jam-band fan,” says he and his team often arrive at their spirits after an intense period of improvisation and creativity.
“The approach is being unafraid to fail,” he says. “The best jam bands put it all on the line. When it works, it’s absolute magic. When it doesn’t, it’s an absolute trainwreck. We don’t release the trainwreck stuff — but it allows us to take an approach that pushes us to the edge of our creativity.”
Hletko and Few are drawn to American single malts because “the rules are not especially restrictive. You can do an awful lot, even under the unimproved definition” of the American Single Malt Whiskey Commission, of which Few is a member. Case in point: the smoke in their whiskey.
“When people talk about woodsmoke in whiskey, they are usually talking about peat smoke,” he says. “Peat flavors are very strong. People describe iodine, Band-Aids, saline and licking ashtrays.” None of those descriptors are true for cherrywood smoke, which is what Few uses instead. “It’s a little bit of sweetness and a tiny bit of smokiness, really dialed back,” Hletko says.
Notes of cappuccino and chocolate pair with this sweet smoke to make it a great dessert dram. A complex mash bill of malted barley makes it rich and complex enough to keep drinkers interested after a great meal. “Really, it’s unlike anything that’s out there,” Hletko says.
“American drinkers drink whiskey to experience different flavors," he adds. "American single malts in general expand the palate. They are the perfect opportunity to experience those new kinds of flavors.”
Balcones
“When we started around fifteen years ago, ‘Texas whiskey’ was not yet a thing, and ‘American single malt’ was vague, amorphous,” says Jared Himstedt, head distiller at Balcones. The Waco, Texas, distillery has played a big part in establishing both, thanks to their award-winning, head-turning whiskeys.
How did they go from random Texan distillers to winning major awards for single malts? “You’re not sitting on three hundred years of tradition. No multiple generations before you with expectations of what the category is supposed to be like. It would probably be terrifying for some people. But sometimes, if you know the rules too well, you miss out on some really cool stuff outside those boundaries.”
Balcones’s “1” Texas Single Malt is a reflection of their own tastes. Himstedt loves fruit and acid — what he calls “subtle stuff." Malted barley offers the perfect potential for a fruity, acidic, sour mash. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, there’s still a lot of nods to traditional single malt making.
“You don’t poop on four-hundred-years-plus of everything old-world master distillers learned,” he says. Balcones makes their single malt with one grain variety, traditional M-1 Scottish yeast, and Forsyths pot stills. “Up until it hits the barrel, it’s very similar to anything you’d find in Scotland.”
That barreling changes everything. Using new American oak barrels — aging in the sweltering Texas heat — adds a new lens to the Scottish mashing and distilling styles. “We knew how foreign single malt was to many American drinkers,” he says. Using new oak barrels is a way to instill flavors American drinkers would know. “It’s funny how often self-professed bourbon guys come up to try our single malt, aged mostly in virgin oak. And they love the flavors. And I think, 'Well, you’re a bourbon guy, but you really love oak.'”
This shift in American drinkers energizes the folks at Balcones. “I think it’s awesome that bourbon guys have badass rum collections,” Himstedt says. “Drinkers are more informed and ready to explore.” The key for ASM moving forward, he thinks, is having empathy for drinkers who want familiarity. “There has to be some dotted lines that people are familiar with,” he says.
“I think it’s a rad turning point in whiskey history,” he says. “I feel lucky, never having a master plan, and waking up one day, and you’re in the middle of something nobody ever saw coming.”
A version of this story first appeared in Gear Patrol Magazine. Learn More.
