I know we love to love bourbon, but rye is bourbon’s wise old grandsire, and we should respect our elders😊 Rye whiskey was also unique to the the United States in the way that it was made. While Europe WAS distilling rye into spirits, they were lautering their mashes (separating the solids from the liquids) before fermenting or distilling their rye spirits. Distillers that came to America had to re-learn how to make rye whiskey in the American style- with the solids remaining in the mash when distilling took place (otherwise known as distilling “on the grain”). Whiskey distillers learned how to make rye whiskey in the East and moved their stills and skills with them when they went west.
Brother to Pennsylvania’s rye whiskey is Pennsylvania’s apple brandy/applejack. The eastern part of the state was quite famous for its apple brandy. Farmers filled their wagons with their apple harvests and delivered them to their local distillery for processing. Apple brandy/whiskey was a seasonal item and expectation for production was so high each season that distillers sold out of product almost immediately. If the first batch of pressed apples were made into an alcoholic cider, the remnants of the pressing, or pomace, would be fermented into spirits or stored in barrels for fermentation and distillation in the winter. Of course, what we call apple brandy was often called apple whiskey- there were no hard and fast rules about designations back then, so whiskey was made from what you had- rye was what you harvested in the summer and apples were what you harvested in the fall. Potatoes come with the first frost and maple sap will come in at winter’s end. The seasons brought different crops and that meant different things went into the still.
