What role did it play in 18th-century America? They carefully searched records for hints about how the distillery functioned on an industrial level, making note of the number of stills used by Anderson, for example, to make the whiskey. Esther White , director of archaeology with the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, helped lead the reconstruction.
By , the distillery was open to the public. But the reconstructed distillery is more than a static homage to Washington's business-savvy: it's a fully-functioning distillery in its own right.
Each year, Steve Bashore, manager of historic trades at Mount Vernon, leads a small team in distilling whiskey exactly as Anderson and others did in the original distillery. They've been doing distillations twice a year once in March, another roughly around November since , and have been selling the whiskey to visitors the first rye whiskey sold from the distillery sold out in two hours.
Like Washington's original recipe, the whiskey they are making is predominately rye, with 65 percent of the mash composed of rye grain, 35 percent corn, and 5 percent malted barley. The grains are ground in the gristmill, then added to barrels in the distillery along with gallons of boiling water.
On the second day of the process, the barley is added, which converts the grains' starches into sugars. On the third day of the process, yeast is added, which eats the sugars and turns them into alcohol. Then, the mash is poured into the copper stills which we recreated from a surviving 18th-century still displayed in the distillery's museum, on the building's second floor , where it is heated by a wood fire.
As the mash mixture heats, alcohol vapor rises to the top and is funneled into a coiled pipe, which is cooled by water from a nearby creek. As the alcohol vapor cools, it condenses back to liquid, which flows out of the barrel into a container. To see how whiskey is made at Mount Vernon, check out the video below.
In Washington's day, this whiskey would be sold clear and unaged—but today because there's a market for it , Bashore and Mount Vernon will age some of the whiskey that they distill. This year, for the first time, the distillery was also used to make Washington's peach brandy. The distillery or gristmill another example of Washington's penchant for innovation, with its state-of-the-art automated technology are located 2. A Smithsonian magazine special report. Steve Bashore from Mount Vernon walks us, step by step, through the process of making of whiskey, as….
Learn more about George Washington's Mount Vernon distillery and the 18th century process used to make…. Learn more about George Washington's Mount Vernon distillery - the largest distillery in America at its…. We are proud to be featured on the American Whiskey Trail , an educational journey into the cultural heritage and history of spirits in America. Visit the Distillery Today, a faithfully reconstructed working distillery produces small batch spirits on site and is open to visitors April - October.
Learn More. Virtual Tour. Watch the Video.
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