Episode Seven: American Single Malt Whiskey with Westland Distillery’s Chris Riesbeck

The Cottonmouth Club Presents promotes bars, bar culture, cocktails and spirits. In this episode, we do a deep dive into American Single Malt Whiskey with Westland Distillery’s Chris Riesbeck.

Our discussion starts with Westland Whiskey, but we ended up talking about so many aspects of whiskey, how it’s produced, and the idea of provenance as it applies to distilled spirits. Some highlights include:

- What is American Single Malt?
- The specific science of distillation
- How malting is like a Giant Hamburger
- The Barley Economy
- Microclimates in the Northwest
- The utility of barley as a flavor component
- Distilling 101
- Mind your teeth!
- What do yeast eat?
- How local is local?
- Why America should be known for its single malts
- Prohibition resets the clock
- What is the American Spirit?
- Cultural Terroir
- Beer connection to the Northwest
- The craft spirits movement as true craft
- Where you age matters
- Air dried vs. kiln dried barrels
- Tannins
- Coopers and the things they know
- What about charcoal?
- Do you have to be so dorky?
- Regional topicity (whatever that means)
- Whiskey as an agricultural product
- What about cocktails?
- Seattle as an incubator of ideas

Music: The following samples were retrieved from the Free Music Archive of the Library of Congress, Web Archives Division: “The Place that Never Get Old,” “A Weird Mechanism,” “Every Myths Are True,” “Frog in the Well”