Rig Hand White Dog Corn Distillate aged for 14 weeks in a small 1 liter cask.
The Rig Hand Craft Distillery (formerly Big Rig Distillery) opened their doors on October 17, 2015 and they already have an impressive line-up of spirits for sale at their boutique store within the facility. These spirits include their Premium Vodka and their selections of White Dog Distillate (not whisky for three years yet); and as well as their intriguing Sugar Beet Brum.
The distillery’s White Dog Malted Corn Distillate is produced from 100 % Alberta grown corn distilled upon the company’s main still (Mighty Morley). This is a versatile still consisting of a large wash still, two columns, and a condenser. The columns are different sizes, a short 4-plate column is used for stripping the spirit (reducing the water content), and a tall 16-plate column is used for Vodka production. The Corn Distillate is distilled twice through the through short 4-plate column to produce a more flavourful spirit than if the 16 plate column had been used. After distillation the spirit is either filtered and reduced to bottling proof (53.4 % alcohol by volume for my sample) to be sold as White Dog Corn Distillate, or it is placed in re-used oak casks to become whisky in three years.
For this review, I decided to aged the distillate for 14 weeks in a small 1 litre oak barrel in an attempt to simulate the maturation of a premium well-aged whisky. As you can see from the picture I snapped of the final product (placed in a new decanter), the hue of the whisky had reached deep copper .
I thought it would be interesting to share my simulation results as a ‘Whisky in Progress Review’.
You can read the results here:
Review: Rig Hand White Dog Corn Distillate (An Aging Simulation)
Please enjoy my review, Chimo!
Please bear in mind that this was only a simulation and all conclusions reached should be interpreted with caution.
This past winter (on January 31, 2017), I took a little tour east of Edmonton along the Yellowhead Highway to the 
When I arrived, I found that Rob and Barb had developed a spirit which hearkened back to a time before prohibition. This is a spirit which was first produced when a small rural population (who had immigrated from Europe) carried on a centuries old tradition of small pot distillation. Before prohibition, (with very few police to patrol the vast prairie) the tradition prospered. However first prohibition, and then government taxation, drove the spirit underground where it almost vanished. Fortunately for us today, distillers, Rob and his wife Barb have (through their steadfast research and commitment) brought back a spirit steeped in the agricultural heritage of Alberta.
The Victoria Caledonian Distillery has been on my radar for a while now. I first heard of it when founder Graeme Malconey invited me to an information seminar and whisky tasting several years ago. At that time the distillery was just in the planning stages and Graeme was touring the country raising money to build his distillery.
The Rum Howler Blog 