The title of this article pulled at your innermost soul. You saw brisket, and you saw it sitting ever so closely to whiskey. Brisket Whiskey? What could that be? Next, you saw that amazing wordplay. (Meet and meat have met, people!) All things considered, we'll be shocked if anyone doesn't click into this story to read all of its italicized glory. We digress. Meet Brisket Whiskey; it's meat on the rocks.
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No, you probably can't get your hands on the Brisket Whiskey. It was conjured up by the delightfully creative minds of San Antonio's Ranger Creek Brewing & Distilling, and it may not be bottled again. We're getting ahead of ourselves, though.
Brisket Whiskey was part of the Ranger Creek Texas Whiskey Club package. You can either join the two bottle or four bottle club, paying $55 or $100 per quarter respectively. November, February, May, and August are special months for those in the Texas Whiskey Club. During each of those months, there's a pick-up party where you can get that quarter's whiskey.
August 2017 was a special month for those in the Club. First, it was the Club's inaugural party. Second, members got some gin. And they also got Brisket Whiskey. Let's dive in and really get to the meat of what it is.
San Antonio's @rangercreek made a brisket whiskey, and all of Texas is now broken-hearted because it was a one-off. https://t.co/4hDdWalWQZ
— Arianna Auber (@ariauber) August 31, 2017
Ranger Creek's head distiller, Allan Hall, came up with this ludicrous, tantalizing concoction. At first, it was just a silly idea; he infused beef jerky into a white whiskey. Shockingly, the result was better than he could've imagined, and the bourbon flavor held up beautifully to the black pepper of the brisket recipe.
The jerky experiment was good, but he wanted to harness this idea and truly hone it into something special for the Texas Whiskey Club's first pick-up party. Aided by a local chef, John Herdman, Hall dehydrated roughly 60-odd pounds of beef brisket. Complemented by ancho chile peppers and roasted garlic, the dehydrated meat was stored in kegs with a white whiskey base. There it would sit for two months before barreling could begin.
Bottling posed a unique obstacle. The fat content of the meat was nearly impossible to filter out. Chunks of fat aren't the rocks that most people imagine, so each bottle was filtered heavily. All in all, the project was undeniably exciting. It did, however, cut back on time that could be spent on other projects.
That said if you have one of the ninety bottles of Brisket Whiskey you're blessed. Since it took so much work to craft and bottle, the Brisket Whiskey will probably ne'er rise again. Keep your eyes peeled for Rimfire finished in Tempranillo barrels and coffee whiskey coming this November.
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This post was originally published September 6, 2017
