They’re here! Short Mountain Mini Barrels available at the Still House Store Saturday Sept. 1
Make your own Barrel Charred Shine
Give your authentic Tennessee Moonshine the age of a fine Bourbon with our 2 liter Short Mountain Mini Barrels. Each new charred White Oak barrel fits two 750ml bottles of spirit and can be used several times with proper care. Making “charred Shine” takes days as opposed to months or years in larger barrels.
Short Mountain Mini Barrels retail for $55 and will be available at Short Mountain Distillery starting Saturday September 1. They will be available online in October. Each mini barrel includes the barrel, bung, spout, stand, instructions and sanitizer.
Charred Shine can be enjoyed like a fine Bourbon as a drink or in food products such as: Charred Shine BBQ sauces, donut glazes, or flavoring in chilies, soups or baked sweet treats.
How To Use Short Mountain Mini Barrels
Be sure spout is secure in the barrel. Remove bung, fill with warm water, close, wrap with a moist towel for a few hours. This will swell and seal the oak wood.
Remove water. Select a fine unaged whiskey, like Short Mountain Shine! Pour into barrel and leave to age to preferred taste. Enjoy your charred Shine responsibly!
Proper care and tips:
Keep barrel in alternating warm and cool environments to expand and contract spirits in and out of the oak.
If storing barrel between uses, use enclosed sulfite tablet for at least a day before rinsing and reusing, especially if using well water. Dissolve pill in water, pour water into barrel and allow to sit for a day to sanitize if using well water. Do not allow barrel to dry out and crack. Wrap with moist towel to seal any external cracks.
Remove bung when using spout to allow spirit to flow.
It’s official! You can now buy a bottle of our 105 Proof Authentic Tennessee moonshine in stores across Middle Tennessee.
It’s quite a site to see our county’s history and heritage in a bottle on a store shelf, and we are mighty grateful to all the support we’ve gotten from thousands of you who have visited our distillery since we opened in March.
We also want to thank all the retail store owners and their family and friends who came out to our official Middle Tennessee launch party last night at City House. The crowd was about twice what we expected, but Peg Leg Porker Pitmaster Carey Bringle kept everyone delightfully stuffed with a whole pig. The Jake Leg Stompers brought the Bluegrass while the DrinkMusicCity crew kept drinks flowing with four new Moonshine cocktail recipes we’ll share with you in a couple of days.
Here are a few stores that carry Short Mountain Shine in the Middle Tennessee region. Follow us on Facebook for future launch parties in Knoxville, Memphis and Chattanooga!
Short Mountain Distillery invites you to learn some of the basics about food and beverage fermentation from fermentation expert and author Sandor Katz! This workshop is one of the first in a series of food and beverage workshops we’ll host throughout the year.
WHAT: Basic food and beverage fermentation workshop with COST: $15 ($40 if you’d like a copy of Kat’s latest book) WHEN: July 14, 2012 – 9a.m. – 12p.m. (three hours) WHERE: Short Mountain Distillery – 119 Mountain Spirits Ln., Woodbury, TN 37190 LIMIT: 15 people (contact John Whittemore to reserve a spot – 615-216-0830)
Katz was recently featured on NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross talking about his latest and most comprehensive book on fermentation called The Art of Fermentation. In 2010, Katz was also recently featured in a five page spread in the New Yorker Magazine.
This basic fermentation workshop is a shortened version of Katz’s multi-day, hands-on workshops he gives around the world. You’ll learn how some of your favorite foods are actually fermented and how you can prepare and store your own fermented foods such as cheese, beer, chocolate, tea, pickles, sauerkraut, kimchi, salami, miso, tempeh, soy sauce, yogurt and much more.
Sometimes people need a good reminder of how things used to be. We could speed things up with tractors or increase our yield with a few chemicals, but when it comes to making good whiskey, some things just can’t be rushed.
A good team of mules are hard workers. Sometimes they’re slow, sometimes stubborn, but dedicated to getting the job done.
This is the second year we’ve teamed up with the Middle Tennessee Mule Skinners Association to disc our organic corn fields. Twelve teams came out Saturday and helped make farming look easy. The field they disced will become the corn that makes our authentic Tennessee Moonshine.
If you missed this year’s discing, be sure to come to our grand opening Saturday April 21 for free mule wagon rides, tours and Moonshine tasting. You can also catch a performance by the Tennessee Mafia Jug Band. And if the timing is right, we’ll have a few bottles of Shine for you to take home a genuine taste of this unique Tennessee experience.
Wanda Thompson and her son Aaron Thompson show off their cranberry-pecan Moonshine Cookies at The Blue Porch.
Some things are just meant to be, like Moonshine infused icing on a blue berry bread pudding. If that sounds amazing, wait until you take a bite of this and other tasty treats being whipped up in The Blue Porch at the Art Center of Cannon County.
Owners Wanda and Aaron Thompson have taken our authentic Tennessee Moonshine to a whole new level by baking it into cookies, soaking it into oatmeal cake and drizzling it in icing over two different types of bread pudding.
By the time I showed up to do some research yesterday, it looked like half of Cannon County had already decided the blue berry bread pudding is a hit. There was none left, and I could see why. It’s the one treat with the most distinguishable taste of Short Mountain Shine. You can taste it in the cookies if you know what to look for. Like with most baking, there isn’t any more alcohol in these than there would be cooking with extracts.
Short Mountain Distillery is a sponsor of the April 13-28 performance of Mitch Albom’s Duck Hunter Shoots Angel at the Arts Center. Be sure to give yourself plenty of time to stop by The Blue Porch and take home a genuine taste of Cannon County!
I’m certainly not the first person to infuse bacon into alcoholic beverages. A quick search led me to a number of very informative posts by fellow bacon lovers who all seem to use roughly the same process called “fat washing.” Here’s how Southern California mixologist Don Lee describes it.
The fat is actually what makes this infusion possible. Fat is non-polar, while drinking alcohol (40% abv) is mostly water and thus polar. This prevents the fat from being dissolved into the alcohol. The alcohol itself (ethanol), however is both polar and nonpolar, allowing water to be dissolved into itself as well fat soluble compounds. What this means is that flavorful compounds from the fat will transfer into the alcohol while keeping the fat itself separate. This, combined with the higher freezing point of fat v. low freezing point of alcohol makes it possible to solidify the fat in a standard freezer and easy to remove.
Lee uses 1 oz. of rendered bacon fat in a 750ml bottle of bourbon. It’s the same recipe Jacob Grier says PDT uses in New York. You may be confident that you won’t screw up a whole 750ml bottle of bourbon or moonshine. I’m not. So, here’s my recipe that should make at least six cocktails.
Bacon infused Moonshine and Bourbon:
4-6 strips of thick hickory smoked bacon
6 ounces of bourbon (I used Buffalo Trace Kentucky Straight Bourbon) or moonshine or both
Cook the bacon and collect a tablespoon of rendered bacon fat. Pour it into 6 ounces of bourbon or moonshine and let sit for two hours. This is probably a larger ratio of bacon to bourbon or moonshine than other recipes, but I love bacon. You can shove the bacon in your moonshine or your mouth or both. I did both.
After the bacon flavor has been taken by the spirit, pour into a plastic cup and place into the freezer until all the fat solidifies. This may take a few hours. Remove the fat, filter and serve neat or in cocktails that are complimented by a smokey (smokey maple bourbon) flavor.
These really wanted to be donuts. I found this recipe for Bourbon glazed donuts that pretty much read my mind, except the part where I don’t have a donut pan and the thought that this recipe is a little light on the bourbon.
Here’s my slightly modified version turning them into stunted cupcakes. It makes 12 donuts if you do it right. I used a cupcake thing and came out with about 15 adolescent cupcakes.
2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup white sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 tsp. salt
3/4 cup milk
2 eggs, beaten
1/2 cup Buffalo Trace Bourbon
1 Tbsp. melted butter
Pre-heat the oven to 325 F. Mix all the dry ingredients. Mix the milk, eggs, melted butter and 1/4 tsp. of bourbon. Mix the wet and dry ingredients. Pour a pitiful half an inch or so into each cupcake thing.
Cook the donut cupcakes for 8 minutes, then check and realize you probably need about 4 more minutes. I did. I could tell because when I lightly pressed the tops I saw batter.
While this is cooking, make the Bourbon glaze by mixing 1 cup powdered sugar, 1/4 cup real maple syrup and 1/4 cup heavy cream, about 1/4 cup of bourbon. It makes way too much, but you can taste it a lot and probably save it.
When the donut cupcakes are done, get a glass with a few pieces of ice and pour the remaining bourbon in the glass. Let the cupcakes cool and then drizzle that bourbon glaze over them and eat a few with the rest of your bourbon.
John Whittemore shares how to grow Shiitake mushrooms on a native white oak log. If done right, these logs will produce mushrooms for several years.
Nothing goes better with good friends and good drinks than good food. Saturday October 29 at 2 p.m. Short Mountain Distillery is offering our first workshop on cultivating your own Shiitake mushroom log. This workshop is in conjunction with Little Short Mountain Farm. Space is very limited and available by reservation and $30 by emailing John Whittemore at blueshillfarm46@yahoo.com or calling 615-216-0830.
John has been growing Shiitake mushrooms for market and personal use for seven years. Guests will use a drill to inoculate their own white oak log with Shiitake mycelium from Summertown, TN and learn how you can keep it producing several pounds of these beneficial mushrooms for years to come.
We also want to thank all the retail store owners and their family and friends who came out to our official Middle Tennessee launch party last night at 
Katz was recently featured on 
