🥃Yes, This Whiskey Is Made Out Of Beer!🍺

And it’s climate conscious.

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The Deligram highlights some of the best food artisans and tastemakers in New York and beyond. In our last feature, we spoke to Caitlin Hubner, who launched Cait’s Key Lime Pie out of her Bed-Stuy apartment during the pandemic. This issue spotlights a slightly larger operation: Arcane Distilling in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Here, the brand’s CEO Brian Thompson explains the cosmic method they use to make whiskey from beer and their quest to be “a whiskey for everyone.”

The Product: One-of-a-kind whiskeys distilled from craft beer.
The Deli Pick: Arcane x KCBC “Superheroes Among Us," a limited-edition collaboration, which has notes of ripe citrus and tea biscuits.
How To Buy: Shop directly on the Arcane Distilling website.
Price: $45.99.

I have a background in beer. I owned a brewery in California called Telegraph Brewing. And after we sold that in 2017, I was looking for a new opportunity. And I heard about Arcane Distilling through a mutual acquaintance, which was at the time just a one-man operation in Brooklyn. David Kyrejko is the original founder, and he was making just incredible vacuum-distilled beer whiskies, from about 2015. He has a real passion for energy efficiency, decarbonizing and doing everything possible to attack climate change at its heart. In 2019, we decided to join forces and grow the business.

Distillation, by its nature, has a pretty high carbon footprint. It takes a lot of energy to boil the liquid, whatever you're distilling. David understood that under a vacuum, liquids boil at a lower temperature. So he thought, well, what if we did this distillation under vacuum? We could, and it requires a lot less energy. 

Another aspect of whiskey manufacturing is that it takes a long time in barrels to develop the flavors that a whiskey drinker wants. So David’s other big breakthrough was, what if we start with delicious craft beer and we capture those flavors? Rather than allowing the flavors that we want to develop during the aging process, let's develop the flavors that we want during the brewing process. So, he patented a process that allows, under vacuum, this distillation machine to capture all of these aromas and flavors of the beer and preserve them in the whiskey. Heat destroys flavors and aromas or certainly changes them. Since we are able to do this in an entirely closed system at very low pressure, it’s sort of like distilling in outer space! We're not degrading any of the volatile aroma and flavor compounds because we're not heating it very much. It's just room temperature, basically. And so that's really what the uniqueness of our processes is that we're able to capture all of these aroma and flavor compounds in the same form they are in the beer.

[Arcane has] collaborated with a lot of breweries around New York City, and a couple in Chicago, too. Since I joined, we've really only collaborated with one, because we only relaunched earlier this year in May. So far, we've collaborated exclusively with KCBC, Kings County Brewers Collective, who are our neighbors here in Bushwick. They are really great guys, great brewers, and make great beers. And we're really excited that our first whiskey release was co-branded with them.

We don't want to just be seen as a whiskey for beer lovers. You know, that's sort of an obvious audience for us. The vast majority of people that have sampled Arcane like it, and what we're seeing is that it isn't just beer drinkers that like it. We’ve certainly had this experience: we'll be doing an event and somebody says, “Oh, you know, I don't really like IPA.” Well, this isn't IPA. It's just distilled from an IPA. Give it a taste. And more often than not, people go, “Wow, you know, I'm not much of a beer drinker. I really don't like IPA, but I really like this.” We really do want to be a whiskey for everyone. We don't want to be just some exclusive, special occasion whiskey. We really want to be a go-to whiskey in everybody's home, as well as at bars and restaurants.

Greatest hit: Alpha. It's distilled from a triple IPA. When you open up a bottle and pour some into a glass for the first time, you’re just hit with this wave of hop aroma. And it's unlike any other whiskey out there. It really captures what our process is all about.

Best way to enjoy Arcane Whiskey: However you like it! We've done it in high balls. A lot of our bar partners have created their own signature cocktails, and they've been amazing. Our latest whiskey, Imperial, is really amazing as an old fashioned. It really transforms and elevates just a classic old fashioned. [Phil Morgan, the head distiller, also suggests a Manhattan, while Karim Lateef, head of marketing and digital consumer experiences, recommends using it to make a mule with ginger ale.]

Favorite places to drink in NYC: Down and Out, As Is, Top Hops Beer Shop, Grand Army Bar, BierWax, KCBC Taproom.

Makers you admire: The crew at KCBC, they are just fantastic. And the crew at Other Half have also done an extraordinarily good job. They've really grown that brand to amazing heights. 

This is kind of a deep cut, but Kelly Taylor is a longtime brewer in New York City. He was at KelSo and, before that, Heartland. I got my start as a brewer back in 2003, as an assistant brewer, working with Kelly, and so many of New York's prominent brewers now also worked under him. And I think that his legacy created a whole new generation of New York City brewers, whether it's Other Half or Fifth Hammer. His legacy runs deep.

Story by Cristina Martin.
Photos by Teddy Wolff for The Deligram. Edited by Sarah Leon.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.