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We sell gift vouchers - for more details call us on 0115 911 0555 or email us at eann@gauntleys.com
Yukon Brewing began life in 1997 as The Chilkoot Brewing Company Ltd. Founded by former Chemical Engineer Alan Hansen and former Mechanical Engineer Bob Baxter after a number of ‘what if’ conversations around a campfire, somewhere in the Yukon during a canoeing trip. The Chilkoot was the path that the klondikers hiked from Skagway in Alaska over the mountains to get to the Yukon during the gold rush in the 1890’s. Apparently, they thought it was a cool name for a brewery and obviously it had a resonance with the local area, however, everyone outside of the Yukon had no idea what that was all about, so when they were looking to expand sales outside of the area, they changed the name to the Yukon Brewery.
Apparently, right from the word go Alan wanted to buy a still and start producing whisky, but they decided to learn how to walk before breaking into a sprint, so to speak and it wasn’t until 6 or 7 years later that they were in a stable financial situation, which allowed them to revisit the whisky production idea. So, they both enrolled on a distilling course at the Michigan State University, which was being run by the German Still makers Christian Carl. Both Alan and Bob were so impressed by them, that they purchased a 500 litre still from them.
Now, as we know, you can use the same still as both a wash and spirit still, but it is much better practice to have one still do one job and in most cases the workhorse spirit still tends to be larger than the refining spirit still. However, it appears that the budget for this project wouldn’t stretch to the purchase of a second still and it certainly didn’t stretch to having Christian Carl’s installation team flying over to install it! So, they installed it themselves over Easter in 2009.
Being an ingenious pair, Alan and Bob had thought that they could use their 2500 litre brew kettle as a wash still. In fact, they had already kitted out the brew kettle with swan neck flue in order to condense the steam from the brewing back into water and figured that would be idea for whisky production. However, as Christian Carl pointed out, their brew kettle contained no copper, so a number of experiments later, they settle on a fix, that being the addition of a removable copper helmet for the kettle, which was filled with copper wool and can be botted on when the kettle needs to become a still.
Now that poor old brew kettle needs to do two jobs, they needed to once again get creative, so they have a spring/summer brewing season when the kettle is just a kettle and an autumn/winter distilling season when the kettle is a still. This means that their whisky production is fairly small and results in approximately 40 to 48 barrels of 65% spirit per distilling season.
Their ingenious nature is also in full display in the range of whiskies that they bottle. They essentially have for ranges in the portfolio. The first is called classic, and it is exactly that, a lovely, fruity, estery spirit aged in ex-Bourbon casks. The second is their peated bottling, which is self-explanatory, the third is called Special Finishes, which see’s the guys finish their whisky in a selection of different casks, such as ex-sherry and ex-port. The final bottling in the range is called Innovative and this is where they really go to town. Releases have included whisky made with different grains and even one that was finished in ex-Mapel Syrup casks.
It is probably unlikely that these innovative releases will make their way over to the UK given the Scotch Whisky Association’s dislike of any innovation in whisky, but you never know. At least the other are now being imported into the country and I have to take a little bit of the credit for that. The distillery had been sending me samples for a number of years for me to review and I had been telling a number of importers that they really needed to look into bringing Yukon whisky to the UK and finally one has. So, do me a bit favour and pick up a bottle, because if you love great whisky, you will love Two Brewers!
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