Tasting Stranahan’s Colorado whisky

A little change today, with an American malt whiskey. Made of barley. and In Colorado. Eighty per cent of the barley used to distil this one  is grown in Colorado with the remainder coming from the Rocky Mountain region, which is nice. The process is interesting : The barley goes through a roller mill and then into 30 barrel mash-tun  at the distillery.  The grain is mashed, sparged and transferred as a naturally maltose-sugar-rich liquid to the kettle where it is boiled before being filtered, cooled and transferred to one of 60 barrel fermentation vessels. Once the fermentation is complete, the wash is then again filtered and transferred to distillery holding tanks. From the holding tanks, the wash goes into a custom made combination pot (scotch style) and column (bourbon style) still, made by Vendome Copper Co. of Louisville, Kentucky. it’s distilled  twice, of course, taking the best parts of the doubling run after which the spirit is filled  into 52.8 gallon charred, American white oak whiskey barrels. The Whiskey is aged a minimum of two years, before it’s ready to be bottled.

Normally i have no access to many American whiskies, as none are here, and outside the USA they are scarce and expensive. Happily my good friend, hebro, and whisky fanatic Josh (from the JSMWS) sent me some of this nectar.

Stranahans Colorado Whisky , 47%

Nose: Starting very sweet and strong with guava jam , tons of vanilla , honey , polished wood and spices. Wee whiff of balsamic, pine and fresh cut grass. Clearly a lot of new wood influence with that great Guava jam (i once ate a wonderful desert of that kind in an Israeli restaurant, and that smell just came back to me).
Palate: Sweet and full of spice on the entry. Burnt sugar, rum, again tons of vanilla with fried bananas, flambé with liquor.Yumm.
Finish: Spicy wood and ripe banana.

Overall this is a cracking dram in my opinion. Not very refined, but considering it’s age, it’s not as savage as one might expect.Teriffic nose, and palate, very powerful and exotic with the banana guava combo.Certainly, well done. well well done.

Score: 87/100

Thanks you Josh, for this one!