Yesterday I wrote a short piece on The Mash Bill, the marketing laden brochure from Kentucky Bourbon Distillers. The Distillers that do not distill…

I thought it nice to do something similar on the real mash bill, from which they take their name.

In the USA there are a lot of distilleries that use a multitude of grains to produce their whisky. Of course, there are some restrictions to what you can and cannot use, but those are more focussed on quantities than on the type of grain. For example, to produce a bourbon you have to use 51% corn. The remaining 49% can be a mixture of other grains, but most typical are rye, malted barley and wheat.

Of course, there are those small craft distilleries that try lots of different things. This can vary from using 100% malted rye for a ‘Single Malt Rye’ or using somewhat more obscure grain types like buckwheat, brown rice or triticale (a hybrid of wheat and rye).

Officially it doesn’t really matter what you use, as long as you record it. This is where the Mash Bill comes in. The Mash Bill is a record of the exact grain mixture that you use for making a wort. It is a mandatory facet of brewing and distilling.

Above I mentioned a 100% Rye mash, which Old Potrero uses in some of their products, but this is not usual. Apart from the desired flavour there is always the efficiency of the mashing to consider. Usually in bourbon and American whiskey there is at least a little bit of malted barley in the mash. This is done because malted barley is very high in maltose, a grain sugar, that is used to create alcohol in the next step of the process, after the wort is made. When only rye is used, the mash becomes very sticky and glue like which makes it very hard to use.

In the case of a smoother tasting bourbon the wheat goes up, and when a more spicy character is desired, more rye is used.