The Story Behind The $200 Cape Breton Whisky Made From Alexander Keith’s IPA
GLENVILLE — Decades ago, Lauchie MacLean started an experiment at his Cape Breton distillery.
With the cooperation of Alexander Keith’s brewery, he brought some of Nova Scotia’s most famous beer to Glenora Distillery with the hope of turning it into whisky.
His experiment sat in a dark corner of a Glenora warehouse for so long most of the folks at Keith’s forgot about it.
But 18 years after it began, MacLean’s experiment has finally ended. The result is Glenora’s new Alexander Keith’s single-malt whisky.
MacLean says the whisky was born one evening when he and an Oland bigwig were sitting around chatting (at the time, Oland owned the Alexander Keiths brewery).
“We might have been having a tipple or two [and] we were both gladhanding and patting each other on the back, complementing each other’s products,” MacLean says.
MacLean says he started thinking about Keith’s beer and Glenora whisky and what might happen if they put the two products together.
“I said what happens when we take some of your product… and we take some tankers off it down to the distillery and we distill it, just to see what the God above will give to us. And we did just that,” MacLean says.
That decision wouldn’t pay off for almost two decades.
MacLean says the first taste of the Alexander Keith’s whisky was not great. The product had a very strong malty flavour and Maclean didn’t think it was palatable as a whisky.
“So we said let’s just leave it there to continue to age and just like a teenager that’s unruly, sometimes age gets you into a sophisticated state at a later stage of life,” he said.
Technically, all whisky is made from beer. But the “beer” distillers use (called whisky mash) bears little resemblance to the commercial brew you see on liquor store shelves.
Over the last decade, making whisky from genuine commercial beer has become more common. But when Glenora sealed Keith’s into bourbon barrels nearly two decades ago the idea was more novel.
Most whisky is aged in wood barrels that are charred on the inside. As the temperatures rise and fall with the seasons the alcohol expands and contracts in the barrels. Over time, that “breathing” process smooths out the whisky as it absorbs the flavours of the barrels and air around it.
Glenora’s Keith’s whisky would go through that process for 18 years before it reached that “sophisticated state.” Last year, he tried the whisky and was blown away.
“I was like, wow, this stuff is coming about,” he said. “It’s ready for its show; it’s ready for the prom.”
MacLean says when he approached Keith’s to talk about selling the product it had been so long most people there didn’t even know it existed.
But the brewery quickly got on board and provided its branding for the new product. Glen Breton Alexander Keith’s single-malt whisky is now selling for $200 a bottle.
MacLean says it’s a unique whisky with a flavour profile that includes maple cream, notes of butterscotch, and a light finish of apple.
He says he’s happy the experiment he started so many years ago has finally paid off.
“Sometimes you find you find answers in most unique ways. And I think this is one of them,” he says.