George Dickel Tennessee Whisky

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The Making of George Dickel Whisky

Step 1. Grain Selection & Milling
Whiskey can only be as good as the ingredients used to make it. That's why at George Dickel they are careful to select only the finest all natural grains. Dickel is made from a secret mash of corn, barley and rye The grains are ground at the distillery before being cooked.

Step 2. Mash Tubs
After the grains are finely ground, they are colled in mash tubs in pure spring water from Cascade Spring. In fact, the source of Cascade Spring is located about one-half mile up the road from the distillery

First, the corn is cooked alone to 212 degrees F and cooled to 180 degrees F. Then, the rye is added and the mixture is cooked again, producing a starchy liquid called mash. The distillery has two of these mash tubs.

The corn/rye mash is cooled to 145 degrees F and malted barley is added to naturally convert the starchy mash into sweet mash.

The mash is then soured by added spent beer. Spent beer is the portion of fermented mash that is a by-product of leftover of the previous day's double-distillation process. Adding back the spent beer is what is termed the sour mash process. This process helps maintain consistency from batch to batch.

Step 3. Fermenting Vats
From the mash tubs, the sour mash is pumped into a fermentation vat. The George Dickel distillery has nine of these vats.

Here, the yeast is added to activate the fermentation process. Dickel uses a strain of yeast unique from all other whiskeys, which is one of the primary reasons that George Dickel Tennessee Whisky has such a distinct and memorable taste.

The yeast converts the mash's natural sugars into alcohol producing a bubbling golden vat of fermenting mash. This process takes three to four days depending on weather conditions and at what temperature the fermentation vat was filled.

Once the fermentation process is complete the mash contains about 6% alcohol by volume and is referred to as distiller's beer

Step 4. Double Distillation
From the fermenting vats the distiller's beer is pumped into the stillhouse where it is distilled not once, but twice.

The first still in the process is called a column or beer still. This still is over three stories tall and separates whiskey from beer using live steam. Because alcohol has a lower boiling point than water, it will separate from the water and the grain solid components of the distiller's beer.

The whiskey is distilled a second time in a pot-still doubler. Here, captured steam re-vaporizes the now clear, mellow whiskey into a lighter, purer tasting liquid. At this point, Master Distiller Dave Backus inspects each batch for excellence in taste and clarity.

Step 5. Charcoal Mellowing
The process of charcoal mellowing is the difference between Tennessee whiskey and bourbon whiskey. In this process, the double-distilled whiskey is filtered through sugar maple charcoal.

Dickel's mellowing process is unique in that it is chilled prior to the filtration process. This process of chilling the whiskey resulted from George discovering that the batches of whiskey he tasted during the winter were noticeably smoother than those he tasted during warmer weather. He called this process chill mellowing, and today every drop of George Dickel is chilled to exacting specifications.

The first step in the mellowing process is selecting and cutting sugar maple trees. Trees are cut in the winter months when the sugar maple's rich flavour is stored in the trunk of the tree.

The trunks are allowed to season and cut into2" x 4' strips at the George Dickel sawmill. These strips are hand-stacked and set ablaze in the open air. The Dickel distillery, because of its small size, is the only Tennessee whiskey distillery allowed to burn sugar maple in the open air. This process allows the smoke's impurities to escape from the resulting hard charcoal.

The hard maple charcoal is crushed by hand and packed into one of six mellowing vats located at the Dickel distillery. Ten feet of charcoal is packed into each vat. Two virgin wool blankets are placed on the top and bottom of the charcoal. The top blanket ensures that the newly chilled whiskey uniformly reaches into the vat, while the bottom blanket keeps the charcoal from escaping as the whiskey leaves the vat.

The entire chill charcoal mellowing process takes seven to ten days to complete, and though this extra process is time-consuming and expensive, the result is the smoothest, driest, most mellow Tennessee whiskey made.

Step 6. Barrel Aging
Following the mellowing process, the whiskey is ready for the final step - aging.

George Dickel Whisky is aged in new, charred American white oak barrels. The interior of the barrel is charred to caramelize the wood sugars, forming a layer of flavour called The Red Layer.

During the warm summer months the whiskey expands and during the cold winter months the whiskey contracts, forcing the whiskey to slowly move in and out of the wood, all the while giving the whiskey its colour and rich flavour. Nowhere during the process do they add colour or flavours. The process is all natural!

Full barrels are aged just up the hill from the distillery in the industry's only single-storied iron-clad warehouses, for up to 12 long years.

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