Canadian Whisky by Davin de Kergommeaux

Author:Davin de Kergommeaux
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Appetite by Random House
Published: 2017-10-03T04:00:00+00:00

CANADA BECKONS

Although he is claimed as one of Canada’s best-known distillers, except for a period of about four years, beginning in 1859, Hiram Walker lived all his life in the United States. He commuted daily from his home in Hamtramck, Michigan, to build and operate his steam-powered flour mill and distillery on 190 hectares of Canadian riverfront land. Walker’s success as a grain merchant in Detroit and the huge unserviced grain market in southwestern Ontario helped draw him to Canada, where he invested $40,000 in his new enterprise. Two modest distilleries operating in nearby Windsor at the time offered little competition. There were no other flour mills in the region. As the name of the enterprise, Windsor Flouring Mill and Distillery, suggests, distilling was more than an offshoot of the mill. From the beginning Walker clearly had his eye on the more accommodating Canadian legal climate for whisky. His distillery, which was built as a part of the four-storey wooden mill, commenced operations in June 1858, within months of Walker grinding his first flour. The distillery had substantial capacity with twenty 4,000-gallon fermenters (some were slightly larger). A five-day fermentation period meant that a total output of 16,000 gallons could be ready for distillation each day. Two of the four sets of millstones in the mill ground grist solely for the distillery.

Walker raised the money for this large-scale operation with help from his friends and the Bank of Montreal: an investment of an additional $60,000. In the early days Walker experienced considerable difficulty servicing that debt and the Bank of Montreal continually pressed him for repayment. Thirty years later, Walker’s enterprise had grown to the point that the bank found it profitable to open a branch in Walkerville specifically to service the financial needs of his workers. By 1859, John McBride, one of his key employees from Detroit, was travelling the length and breadth of the United States by train, drumming up business for the two components of Walker’s business: whisky and flour. Before long he added a third: hogs that Walker fattened on distillery waste. The distillery could barely keep up with the demand generated by McBride.

From the start, Walker used corn, rye, and barley malt in his mashes, and used wheat strictly to make flour. In 1860, corn imported into Canada from the U.S. made up about 80 percent of the mash bill, rye 14 percent, malt 3 percent, and oats 2 percent. For flavouring whisky he used 94 percent rye and 6 percent malt. The fermented mash was distilled in a three-chambered wooden continuous still and then passed through a single-chambered copper doubler and a 7.5-metre water-cooled copper worm condenser. The wooden still stood over 10 metres tall and 2.5 metres in diameter. It took several redistillations in the doubler before the spirit was strong enough to qualify as high wines.

These high wines were slowly leached through tall columns of charcoal, similar to those then being used in Toronto by Gooderham and Worts. After a dash of burnt sugar was added for colour, the whisky was ready for market.

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