DISTILLERY PROFILE
The beating heart of Balcones
They describe themselves more as shamans than scientists, and there’s no doubt that in an increasingly crowded distilling environment in the United States, Balcones stands proudly apart. Society brand ambassador Lee ‘Connas’ Conner continues his dive into some of our distilling partners in the US to find out more about what makes this distillery in Waco, Texas tick
Balcones Baby Blue, a blue corn whisky, was the first Texas whisky to come to market since the Prohibition era ended in the US in 1933. It marked the beginning of what has become a distilling hotbed, with dozens of Texan whisky distilleries following in their wake. So how do you go about creating a whisky scene? Balcones’ spirits manager, Gabriel ‘Gabe’ RiCharde lets us peek behind the curtain.
“Back in 2008 there was nothing, I mean literally nothing,” he says. “It was throwing spaghetti at the wall, although we had decided from the get-go that we didn’t want to do bourbon. Our co-founder Jared [Himstedt] gravitated toward sherried Speysiders like Glenfarclas or GlenDronach. I think that really set us down our path of exploration in whisky, you know? Malted barley personified!
“The story goes that the guys, who had some experience with home brewing, decided that it could be done, and before they knew it, they had a lease on a space in town, an old machine shop. They started mortaring in space for a still they bought from Portugal, they manufactured their own equipment, laid their own pipework. They didn’t have the money for fancy engineers or contractors.”
ABOVE: Gabe RiCharde, spirits manager at Balcones, says the team embrace the fluctuations in conditions at the distillery in Texas
DICTATED BY NECESSITY
While their goal may well have been set as distilling with malted barley, the team at Balcones were very much working on a shoestring budget. They had to evolve and cut their teeth with the apparatus and ingredients that were readily available.
“Initially, as corn is readily available around here, we started with that,” says Gabe. “We did everything in one vessel, cooking, fermenting, first and second distillations – all in that small Portuguese still. We did have a mash tun at the time, but we’d bought it second hand and there were all sorts of issues with the outlet. So, they had to wait until they had the money to get it fixed before attempting to make single malt.”
Conversations about growing barley in the area started in 2014, and the first crop that was usable for brewing and distilling was harvested in 2016. Necessity dictated that Balcones imported malted barley from the UK for the first eight years of production.
“They realised early on how cool it was to use an English ale quality malt, so initially we sourced Golden Promise from the UK,” says Gabe.
“When we moved to our new distillery in 2016, with warehouses, a bar, brand home and retail facility, we gradually started introducing Texas malt and we’ve been using it ever since.”
ABOVE: Balcones moved to a new distillery with warehouses, a bar, brand home and retail facility in 2016
A HEALTHY HOUSE CULTURE
If you’ve been following the profiles on our American distilling partners in recent issues of Unfiltered, you may well have noticed a correlation between the rise in home and craft brewing and the rise of a new wave of whisky distillers. Although Balcones recognise the trend, they don’t necessarily identify with it.
“There is a really cool movement of craft brewers moving into distilling, but I don’t think we really fit into that category” says Gabe. “We’re making single malt, not beer. Some of the folks who’ve moved over from craft beer can fixate on clean fermentations, multi-barley mash bills and playing with yeast types and so on.
“We’re not looking for clean, we don’t boil our wort before fermentation or anything like that. Don’t get me wrong, we have a state-of-the-art facility, but we’ve got some funk. We really embrace the climate, and seasoned equipment such as mash tuns and fermenters and so on. We’re not pasteurising or sterilising between runs, we basically just knock off solids to clean between batches. “We have a healthy house culture – if we don’t pitch yeast, it’ll ferment to dryness. We see ourselves as more aligned with what was going on in Scotland when five-to-seven-day fermentations were more common, counting on alcohol and ester production over a long time. To be honest, at this point, I’m not sure that we could sanitise our equipment, it’s part of our house style!”
EMBRACING UNCERTAINTY
What has followed is somewhat of a regional distinction from the distilleries in the colder, wetter, brewer-driven whiskies of the Northwest. In the warmer climes of the south, distillers have chosen to work with more extreme fluctuations in ambient conditions.
“We don’t fetishise certainty,” says Gabe. “We embrace the fact that Texas is a partner in what we’re doing. For instance, it’s around 90°F (32°C) in Waco today, yesterday it was nearer 50°F (10°C). Of course, that will mean a fluctuation in where we cut our spirit. We don’t have a sensor or thermometer to work out our cuts, we gauge them ourselves with our noses and mouths. The variants in production can’t speak for themselves, but we have the challenge of trying to listen to what they’re telling us and how the climate is participating in what we’re doing.
“Sure, we have designed some things into the distillery to manage things like heat fluctuation. For example, the lyne arm on our copper stills is coiled to encourage copper contact, and our condensers are 100 per cent copper. But that’s more common sense to us, because in the Texas climate reflux is hard to come by.
“We don’t see ourselves as chemical engineers who want to control everything. We’re more like shamans, more likely to put our ears to the ground than tamper with complicated chemistry.
“If that means more work when we come to choosing casks when blending new whiskies, that’s cool. We’re a young distillery, it’s going to be some time until we’ve identified the qualities of our true spirit.”
KINDRED SOCIETY SPIRITS
So, how did a Texas distillery end up working with the SMWS? Clearly, Gabe has somewhat of an affinity for our work. “The SMWS is the fucking coolest thing ever, right?” he says. “There has been an explosion in whisky clubs in Texas recently, but the Society was doing it first. Back when our founders were ‘researching’ the type of whisky that they wanted to make, the SMWS was their first port of call. What does whisky made with worm tubs taste like? We’ll find some at the SMWS. PX casks? Go to the Society. Peated Highlands? The Society… “It got to the point where we we’re one of your biggest accounts in the US! So when we got the chance to work with Euan and Kai, it was a real no-brainer. I love that it’s the more interesting off-the-wall stuff we do that excites you. It really speaks to our more adventurous approach, and long may it last!”
PICTURED: The team at Balcones conduct a tasting session