What makes a modern distillery stand out from the crowd? Old-school low and slow distillation methods are one way you'll surely capture my attention. Many of you know that I have had quite a bit of dusty whiskey experience. From old Monongahela Sam Thompson to Overholt, Mount Vernon, Schenley, and beyond—my tasting pedigree runs deep. Things that run common through many of those mentioned distilleries are low barrel entry proof, copper pot still distillation, long, low-heat fermentation cycles in cypress tanks, great cooperage, and high-quality grains.
Enter: Liberty Pole Distillery in Washington, PA. Founded in July 2016 by the Hough family (Jim, Ellen, Rob, and Kevin) with a keen eye towards history, their main mission was to revitalize the Monongahela rye style that was completely decimated during the onset of Prohibition. In 2024, they hit stride and succeeded in their mission with their first release of Old Monongahela Full Proof Rye Whiskey. Their core range of whiskey also includes peated rye, peated bourbon, wheated bourbon, and corn whiskey.
Of course, with the recent resurgence of the bourbon industry, one can't fault a distillery for also producing what is in vogue. Today I'm happy to be able to introduce a new up-and-coming core product as well: high rye bourbon. Jim mentioned in a letter to me that the family was a bit bothered by the fact that some Kentucky style ryes are made with the minimum legally allowable limit of rye, 51%. Being such fans of distilling with rye, they decided to turn the table on this egregious mash bill and produce their own version of barely legal: a 51% corn bourbon. The fact that all the corn used is heirloom varietal Bloody Butcher corn is even better in my book. This mash bill began ramping up in production in 2021, so as of today, you'll only see this released in limited single barrels from the distillery, like the bottle under review here, a Thanksgiving 3 barrel drop that sold out in just a few hours. As of right now, it's not even listed on their website, but you should see more of this label in the next 12–18 months.
Wondering what makes Liberty Pole so unique as a Pennsylvania craft whiskey producer? I got the full rundown from Jim Hough in a recent discourse.
We are an 8 year old family owned distillery. My wife Ellen is the point person behind our branding, the Meetinghouse, and cocktail experience at our distillery. My sons Rob and Kevin are the main distilling team, while I handle a lot of the sales and marketing work. I was a hobby distiller back in the early 2000's and developed a number of the core mash bills we continue to use today. My sons were science oriented kids and spent a lot of time with me on the back deck during their middle and high school years learning about the science of fermentation and distilling. After graduating with Mechanical Engineering degrees and starting their own careers, I got the bright idea to start a distillery as I had grown tired and frustrated with my day job. We formed our LLC in 2015 and opened our doors to the public on July 9, 2016. Rob and Kevin joined full time a few months later. We have just recently moved into a brand new distillery campus consisting of an 8,000 square foot production facility, a colonial themed Meetinghouse where we serve craft cocktails and small bites, and a 3,600 barrel capacity KY style rickhouse (the only rickhouse in PA).
We are pot still evangelists. We use locally grown PA cereal grains for all of our whiskeys. We use Bloody Butcher corn exclusively for all of our corn based whiskeys. Bloody Butcher is a non GMO heritage corn that contributes an incredible amount of flavor to our bourbons and corn whiskey. We have a 1,000 gallon distillation system consisting of a 1,000 gallon mash cooker, four 1,000 gallon fermenters (stainless steel, open top), a 1,000 gallon stripping still from Vendome, and a 600 gallon spirit still from Specific Mechanical out of Victoria BC. We mill all of our grains in house right before mashing to ensure maximum freshness.
After mashing, we transfer to one of our fermenters and do a 6 day, grain in, open top ferment using a distillers yeast we get from Ferm Solutions. While primary fermentation is typically complete in 48 to 72 hours, we love the flavors that develop during secondary fermentation with the various wild yeasts that exist in our distillery. After fermentation, we transfer the 8-10% abv beer to our Vendome pot still and do a grain-in stripping run. The whiskey helmet on our stripping still is purposely designed to be short and squat with a downward facing lyne arm to make it as easy as possible to push those grain flavors and heavier compounds and oils into our low wines collection tank. Our low wines usually have a proof in tank of about 60 proof. After stripping, we run the leftover stillage through our centrifuge which separates the grain from the liquid that remains in the still. We give the grain to a local farmer to feed his cows.
The final step in the distillation process is our spirit run. We transfer the low wines described above and, using our experience with pot distillation, do a slow run for this second distillation. Here we are focusing on making those all important cuts to ensure that we capture proper amounts of heads, hearts and tails into our final distillate. The final proof in tank of our distillate is usually somewhere between 130 and 135 proof. We transfer these "high wines" to our cistern where we proof down using reverse osmosis water to our barrel entry proof of 108. We use a heavy toast, light to medium char 53 gallon barrel from the West Virginia Great Barrel Co. Lower proof distillate will interact with the wood sugars more easily due to the fact that those sugars are more soluble with water than they are with alcohols.
We are producing about 60% more whiskey than we are consuming at the moment. That disparity is allowing us to continue to add age to our whiskeys. Right now, we are only considering barrels that are over 3.5 years old and most of our blends these days are a mix of 3.5 to 4.5 year old barrels. We hope to be using exclusively 4 year old barrels in all of our blends in the next year or so.
Well, to my mind that surely sounds familiar to the low and slow methods I mentioned earlier from the pre-prohibition distilling era. Pot stills are really the only way I've found modern distillate to be as consistently flavorful as the great dusty-era whiskeys I've tried, though there are certainly exceptions to that generalization. If you've never toured a fully functioning distillery, the drone flythrough on their website is completely captivating; I think I've watched it loop at least 8 times already. As for the bottle under review, it was provided to me by Jim at no cost for the purposes of a review. I appreciate the opportunity to give it an honest taste through with no strings attached. Ready to find out what this high rye bourbon is all about? Let's dive into some details and notes!
Company on Label: Liberty Pole Spirits
Whiskey Type: Pennsylvania straight bourbon whiskey
Mash Bill Percentages: 51% Bloody Butcher corn, 40% rye, 9% malted barley
Proof: 113.8°
Age: 4 years, 10 months
MSRP: $66
Further Identification: Barreled at an entry proof of 108° on 1/10/2020 and bottled 11/15/2024; this is bottle 145 of 177 from single barrel 518 named "All the fixins" in reference to the tasting notes aligning well to the dinner table accoutrements for a Thanksgiving time release
Nose: Lifting the glass to my nose reveals a character-rich craft whiskey. Cherry bubblegum leads with an underlying sweetness like some kind of ICEE concoction from the local convenience store. There's a layered complexity to this, just the kind of thing that happens when you put great new-make bourbon into well-coopered barrels at a lower entry proof. There's a stick web of flavor with sorghum at its heart, but sweet perfume notes, fruity esters, and buttery slivered almonds emanate from that lovely starting point. Cherry blossom, strawberry Airheads, and sour apple Laffy Taffy culminate in a transcending transformation. I'd have named this one "Pinches & Pounds" after the candy shop in my hometown. As the candy tones begin to fade, I find the unsweetened cranberry sauce aroma that inspired the actual name for this barrel. This is a lovely treat in the glass. After a sip, hints of oiled leather, brown sugar, anise, and caramel chews build well. Late in the glass, potent aromas continue to dance with sweet notes of dark buckwheat honey that make my eyelashes flutter in flirtatious affection. This is a swoony nose that develops marvelously with time and air. The empty glencairn smells of dusty bourbon, vintage leather, and Butterfinger candy bars.
Palate: My first sip is hefty, leading with soup spices and herbs: black pepper, basil, oregano, thyme, and cow-horn cayenne pepper somehow work incredibly well on this bourbon profile. Overall, it's quite reminiscent of some old dusty ryes with these leading notes. Another sip layers in the sweet factory: cranberry juice, blackstrap molasses, and pear liqueur build well. Sipping later in the glass reveals great wood spice, suggesting adequate aging has been accomplished as toasted coconut lactones and clove-forward eugenol notes jump into the foreground. The linger is long and smoldering with candied cinnamon, anise, persimmon, and grenadine. There's a subtle smokiness that may have me hoping to play with some other toast and char profiles for this particular distillate. My last sip is thoroughly enjoyable as a fire-baked Dutch oven blackberry peach cobbler sweeps across my mind. The finish is determined to last forever with an enduring disposition. Hints of stewed plum, apricot, and black cherry give me hair-raising, contented chills.
TL;DR: Bold character from a bourbon mash bill that leans in hard on great, flavorful grain
Rating: 4/5
I'm thrilled to see distilleries like Liberty Pole being willing to eschew the temptation to maximize their proof gallon production and explore the time-old tradition of low barrel entry proof. This is the way whiskey was made pre-prohibition and why you'll find ardent enthusiasts like myself celebrating the return of such practices. Most distilleries are optimizing for maximum efficiency, answering primarily to their shareholders, and neglecting thoughts on how to maximize quality.
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