Love Beer? Try These Whiskeys

Whisky And Beer Are More Intertwined Than Ever

By Richard Thomas

Rogue Dead Guy Whiskey
(Credit: Richard Thomas)

Whisky (including Irish Whiskey and American Malt Whiskey) have a lot in common because they share similar roots. In the early stages of production, both a distillery and a brewery produce a malted barley wort. I can’t say a beer wort and a whisky wort are indistinguishable, but I can say they are the same in their broad characteristics, and to someone not intimate with the details it’s what happens later that separates the two drinks.

It might be because of their common, grainy foundation that beer and whiskey go so well together. More important, distillers have been using beer to make bierschnaps, bierbrand and other beer-based spirits for centuries. This practice eventually spread to the United States, taking root even before craft whiskey took off in the middle 2000s.

In recent years, the beer and whiskey connection got tied up at the other end of the process. Following in the path of brewers using whiskey barrels to age their stouts, porters and ales, distillers began using beer casks to finish their whiskey. In some instances, this has been an integrated process, with the casks starting at the distillery, going to the brewery and then returning to the distillery again.

So for the beer lovers out there in pursuit of some very tightly woven pairings, here are some whiskies made from beer and finished in beer.

Whiskeys Made From Beer

Charbay Doubled & Twisted: The grandfather of making whiskey from beer in America is Charbay, a winery-distillery that already had great experience in making fruit-based spirits when Marko Karakasevic started making whiskey out of beer some two decades ago. Doubled & Twisted is a recent example, drawing on a clutch of Alembic, double-distilled beers: 50% Aged Single Malt (3 years old); 30% Aged Stout Whiskey (7 years); and 20% Aged Pilsner Whiskey (3 years).

Uprising American Single Malt Whiskey
(Credit: Richard Thomas)

Rogue Dead Guy Whiskey: If your intent on pairing the beer and the whiskey made from it in a beer and a shot or boilermaker combo, and you don’t live next to brewstillery engaged in making whiskey from beer, then your best bet is undoubtedly Dead Guy Whiskey. Rogue Dead Guy Ale is one of the most widely available craft brews around; snag a bottle of this whiskey and you’re set.

Sons of Liberty Uprising: Unless you live in Rhode Island, you aren’t likely to be able to get any of the brews from Sons of Liberty. No matter, because Sons of Liberty turned the usual beer-to-whiskey process on its head. Uprising is made from a stout-ready wort, but they weren’t using the mash bill to make stout initially. Instead, the developed it for whiskey from the start, and only later used it to make a counterpart beer.

Whiskies Finished In Beer Casks

Chichibu IPA Malt Whisky: Whiskey-from-beer is not just an American thing, as we shall see. The Japanese have also taken a turn at it, with this example drawing on Chichibu’s casks used to barrel age Japanese IPAs before being returned to the distillery to put a citrusy finish on their malt whisky.

Jameson Caskmates Stout Edition
(Credit: Richard Thomas)

Glenfiddich IPA Single Malt: This is my favorite example of a whisky finished in a beer barrel so far. William Grant & Sons pioneered the practice with an expression of Grant’s Blended Whisky that has since been discontinued, Grant’s Ale Cask. I always thought that was a lovely pour on the rocks, and Glenfiddich IPA Single Malt is only moreso.

Jameson Caskmates: The Jameson Caskmates series pioneered the idea of a distillery sending its barrels to a brewery, seeing them used to make barrel-aged beer, and them bringing them home to make beer barrel-finished whiskey. The series started with a stout barrel version and then added an IPA barrel expression for good measure.