'That Girl is (just barely not) on Fiyah' (AKA Whisky 101)

Because New England is not exactly a warm, welcoming environment to all manner of plant life in the winter, our ancestors became proficient in preserving food for survival. The prolific story of Tisquantum, member of the Patuxet Tribe of the Wampanoags, tells the tale of a benevolent native who taught the Mayflower Pilgrims to plant corn and fertilize the ground with fish for a more abundant harvest. Fact or mostly fiction, the importance of the story points to food preservation including fermentation which would have been a necessary art and precise science in 17th century Plimoth Colony.

The town of Whitman separated from Abington in 1875. It lays on a stretch of land that was considered somewhat of a buffer zone between Wampanoag and Massachusett Tribal lands. Early residents would have learned to plant hearty crops and preserve their harvest to survive the harsh Zone 6B winters.

I've been fermenting wine for over a decade, having made my first attempt at a Spanish red Tempranillo in 2014 from a store bought kit. Colossal mistake: stirring it before bottling it. It resulted in having to dump it all back into the carboy, allow it to re-settle, re-sanitize the bottles, and bottle it all over again, this time without chunks of sediment in it. You live; you learn.

Since the first attempt, grapes have only been the starting off point. Summer brings an over abundance of berries, fall apples, and every trip north to Vermont results in gallons of maple syrup coming home (if you know where to find the good stuff and avoid the tourist traps). Experimenting with mead, acerglyn, and even banana wine were all natural progressions.

In 2021, a book on authentic distilling, specifically the content on whisky lured me in. The only real experience I had with whisky up until then had been Uncle Ozzie's highballs on Christmas Eve in years past. This book, which I've since lost, addressed the historic nature of whisky and dissected its importance to early immigrants to Nova Scotia. Since two separate and distinct branches of my family tree (Murphy and MacKinnon) had immigrated from their original homelands to Atlantic Canada, the contents spoke to me. It may have also been the origin of my gastro/spirits research.

Amazon to the rescue and I became the proud owner of a still. I believe the phrase I'm now looking for is, 'pride goeth before a fall,' though. My first attempt at distilling was...oh how should I describe it...

• comical

• tragic

• disastrous

• puzzling

• dangerous

• ultimately, a learning experience.

On the first day of actual distilling, after a mash that made me wonder if they're supposed to be so hard to stir, I thought, 'I don't think there should be so much steam coming out of this.' Hindsight being what it is, there was probably a normal amount of steam. I spent much of my time plugging holes with flour paste like it was a game of whack-a-mole. Distilling requires a person to learn about absolute gravity, pressure, steam, how to measure certain aspects of liquid and gas that we don't typically care about, and how to do it all without catching anything on fire.

I have never been more stressed out in my life than I was with that still in the kitchen. At some point, someone was trying to get a lighter to flash to set up the grill and I'm pretty sure I jumped over the counter at full speed to stop them from lighting a fire near the still while it was indoors. Outside went the still, the hot plate, and all of the equipment, where it could blow up if that's what it wanted to do and the house would still be standing after.

Three years later, I was finally brave enough to try it. Still alive. Krissy insists that you don't try these things on yourself; you try them on other people. Maybe I'm just building up my resistance - like iocaine.

It's not as good as Glenmorangie 10 year, but give it a bit more time.