"The big malting houses want to use standardized barley that efficiently malts the same every time. But what a big malting house might see as an inefficiency, Skagit Valley Malting sees as a benefit."

-
Skagit Valley Malting

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Jennells Flowers & Pie

-
Image
As you may know from my prior posts, I am a big supporter of local flour and the local baking community. Just like with breweries, local bakeries will happily share their knowledge and teachings if you are willing to listen, learn, and share. I was looking for a shop to buy a few pieces of pie and found a shop that only sells whole pies. No harm in a little extra pie. After talking with the owner Jennell for the better part of a half an hour about baking philosophy, crust, bread, cookies, etc, we got down to business and talked about her pie shop. She has 2 or 3 pies options per day, but until her arm finishes healing, cream pies are off the menu. She informed me that she was getting a new set of apples late Thursday and I just had to try her apple pie for Friday. Always best to try the bakers best as a first impression. The economics to make a pie are tough. Typically, a bakery charges $20+ for a cake and many charge much more, but pie is not often on the menu. Pie has a stigma of
Read more

Sea Bishop Spirits

-
I have heard from quite a few distillers about choosing a proper location for a distillery. I was expecting community support, access to distributors, desirable rents, or proximity to their homes. The most common answer was none of those, it was the quality of the water. Recently, I have heard from 3 distilleries that they have the best water in the country. I tried the water at each and they each had good water, but was it the best, probably not. I would assume that minute differences in water taste, quality, and hardness could make a tremendous difference in the taste, color, and mouth feel of any spirit, but especially Gin. Sea Bishop Spirits is a small distillery in Black Diamond, WA that produces only Gin. They have 4 varietals of Gin available for tasting and sale at the distillery, a classic Gin, a tarragon infused Gin, a barrel aged Gin, and a Gin aged in a stout barrel. Only the Gin aged in the stout barrel is not available at regional liquor stores and the price for their Gin
Read more

Sidetrack Distillery

-
Occasionally, I miss a place in my backyard, whether due to hours, distribution, product skew, or location. Sidetrack fits 2/4 of those criterium, but I fixed that this last weekend. I was planning on checking out 4 Horseman Brewery, but it was either closed or gone, but I remembered that Sidetrack was near there and should be open. I pulled in to a small farm adjacent to the Green River and immediately remembered my experience at Cockrell Cider in Puyallup, both were farm to glass concepts. In this case, Sidetrack Distilling is a farm to glass concept and make fruit & nut liqueurs and brandies. They use their apples to make a mild apple brandy base and then add the necessary fruits or nuts from their farm in the distillation process. The blackberry, black currant, blueberry, and raspberry liqueurs were sweet and tasted like fruit jam. The lemon verbena, walnut, shiso, and yuzu liqueurs each were unlike anything I had tasted on the market, which explains why they distribute to high
Read more