Balcones

The Balcones whisky have quite a big range of traditional American whiskys. The whiskies are well balanced and of good quality. The distillery experiments a bit with new ingredients like the Hopi blue corn meal and succeeds quite good with them.

The distillery is very small. But the hand crafted pot stills produce a very exciting new whisky.

There is not much knowledge about the stills, as they were not made by any big smithing companies. Everything in the stillroom was built by Chip Tate himself.

The stills are pot stills and are very round at the base. There is no constricting piece or reflux bowl above the intermediate piece. Although the construction of the the neck is very tall and lets the alcohols separate very nicely. In addition the the lyne arm is rising after the bent above the neck.

The ingredients at the Balcones distillery vary a lot. The distillery produces single malt whisky as well as special corn mixtures.

Chip Tate also varies the casks a lot he uses the traditional oak casks as well as many other smaller casks that have a lot better wood to volume ratio and therefore mature the whisky better.

The distillery is still very young and was founded by Chip Tale. His spirits already won quite a few awards and also got rated pretty good by some of the most experienced professional whisky connoisseurs.

The tours at the distillery can only be made with special appointments. You have to call the distillery beforehand.