Though I’ve been somewhat active on my Facebook page, it’s been quite a while since I’ve written a blog post; a lot has been going on this past year and it just fell by the wayside. My first ever post was about distilling things down to their essence and I’ve recently made some changes to get back into some of the things I enjoy a bit more. Family, cooking, writing and exploring the world of whiskey will get more of my time now. I realize I’m a lucky guy.
For my birthday a few months ago a friend and I traveled down to Santa Cruz to do a whiskey tasting at Venus Spirits and I got chance to to talk to owner Sean Venus about the world of craft whiskey.
I first tasted Sean’s rye, from his Wayward Whiskey line, a few years ago while shopping with my wife at a holiday bazaar in Santa Cruz. There was a bar serving local libations, so I had to try some. I had a flight of the Wayard Whiskeys; a bourbon, a rye and a single malt. It was the first rye that I had that I actually liked; it wasn’t a spice bomb like many (especially commercial) ryes are. A little more on that later, and much more about it in future post, as I plan on adding whiskey to the subject matter covered here!
Some of the 100 barrels
Stuart On the Coast: “You use a lot of organic and local ingredients. Why are those important to you?”
Sean Venus: “Organic is super important to us. My wife’s family has been in the organic for decades. Her father started Santa Cruz Organic and a bunch of other food companies and for about 8 years I worked for an organic food company…I just became really important for us to at least support organic agriculture. I wouldn’t say its a huge selling point for our products, we didn’t want to put the USDA logo on our packages, we wanted first and foremost for the spirit to speak for itself. Local is always key and fun. All of our corn comes from California, all our rye comes from California. Our malt comes from Oregon, Washington and California. We’re working with a local maltster in Alameda that sources all of their organic grain from the state of California. Their stuff is super-fresh which brings a new character and flavor to the malt. Usually its kilned and packaged and usually we have it in a couple of weeks as opposed to sitting in silos for seasons. It adds a really unique character in our spirits. we have it in our Sherry Cask and a few other Single Malts that use that.”
Sean Venus of Venus Spirits 
SOC: “Would you say you have a particular whiskey terroir?”
SV: “Definitely. Things that shape our whiskey is number one, the ingredients that we use; number two, and very dramatically, is the alembic still we use. That small alembic still we use has basically a brandy head on it which allows for very strong aromatics and concentration of flavors and aromas. Then, finally, the building. This building is a steel building, uninsulated, really open to the elements. It can be 10 -15 degrees warmer in here than it is outside on a sunny day, then it cools down at night. We’re as they say in Kentucky or Tennessee there’s the seasonality of the whiskey going in and out of the wood in the barrels, that happens to us on a daily basis, which really quickly ages our spirits, so our age statements don’t really reflect the quality and the character of what you really get.”
SOC: “What kind of yeast do you use for your mash? “
SV: “We use a fairly common America ale yeast, the same type that Sierra Nevada uses, it gives us a nice fruity character that comes up a lot in our single malts. We’ve been playing around with the idea of using different yeasts for different whiskeys but haven’t fully committed to that yet.”
SOC: “There’s time. What is it about Char 3 that you like?”
SV: “Its not too aggressive, we do actually have some char 4 that we play around with. It’s kind of a middle road where we get some good nice wood flavors and characters, a little bit of vanilla, a little bit of coconut, but not overly coconutty.”
SOC : Are you toasting before you char?
SV: “Just char. Some people will do toasted heads and charred staves but we don’t do anything like that, its all char.”
SOC: “Are you comfortable talking mash bills?”
SV: “Yeah”
SOC: “So lets start with the rye because its the one I’m most familiar with.”
SV: “The rye that we have currently released is a little bit different than the one we’re producing right now, but its 60% rye, roughly 10% wheat, 15% corn and 15% malted barley. Early on we chose that recipe because we knew we weren’t going to age it very long, it coming out of our small casks and rye takes a long time to mellow out so we wanted to put the best rye in there, and it follows the style of a pre-prohibition whiskey that was popular in the east coast..”
SOC: “Which seems to be making a comeback now, the Maryland style…”
SV: “Exactly. Now we’re experimenting with the more traditional high rye, so its 90% rye, about 8% corn and like 2% malted barley. Malted barley has tendency to dominate the flavor…”
SOC : But you need it…
SV: “Yeah, we need it, but 15% might be a little too much.”
SOC: “I like your current rye mainly because its not super spicy like a lot of ryes are…”
“Yeah, its got a nice sweetness to it.”
SOC: “I’ll have to try the new one and see.”
SV: “I haven’t tried it in a while.”
SOC: “You started with making beer; what do you like in a beer and what do you like in a whiskey?
SV: “Beer is a very quaffable beverage, its refreshing. The process of making beer is also a lot of fun. IPAs are very popular right now, but ever since I can remember I’ve loved hoppy beers. There’s a place for everything and that’s why we do a bit if everything here. It comes to a point at the end of the night that you want s sip of whiskey and your done with beer. There’s something to be said that whiskey is just concentrated beer minus the hops. “
SOC: “Tell us about the new Rick house you are building.”
SV: “We kind of knew this space, we were going to run out of room, so we started looking at other options. The original business plan was to just build some additional warehouse space and throw some barrels in there, but more and more after we got this tasting room started, and we were limited in our current tasting room, we’re only allowed to pour one and a half ounces per person per day without a bona fide kitchen, it kind of limits what we can do here. And this space does not allow us any room to have a kitchen in. We knew we needed more space, and we knew we had a missed opportunity not being able to sell more than one cocktail, so we’re working on a spot next door where initially we were going to buy the land and build the building, and that became a little daunting to focus on our business AND be in the construction side of stuff. We found an awesome partner that’s doing the construction for us, a great designer that’s helped us create the space. The new space will have 3000 square feet of restaurant, it’ll triple the size of our distillery and offer more storage space for barrels and dry goods. We’ll have a tasting room over there that will be slightly larger, about 1000 square feet, where this one is about 600. We’ll move this whole tasting room, the lighting and fixtures over there, copying the same style, and we’ll have space to hold parties of about eighty people as well has have some outdoor space. We get a lot of inquiries about birthday parties, non-profit events and private events and basically we have to say “no” all the time because we just can’t close the tasting room because this is our only customer facing people have when they come to us. When we have the restaurant we can shift people over there if they want to do a tasting. It’ll be a little too much space to start off with, but it will give us some space to grow.”
SOC: “Is there a Craft Distillers group in Northern California?”
“There is , I’m actually the President of the California Artisanal Spirits Guild…
SOC Good question to ask, then!
There is an organization. We have about 40 or so members across the state and we’re basically an organization that works on growing the industry and it being a more viable industry.
SOC: One of the things I love about the West Coast versus the East Coast is if you’re doing the same thing it’s “Oh, let’s help each other…” rather than being in competition.
“There’s a little bit of competition, but there’s a lot of common ground where you can help people that’s not going to ruin your business, and in general we have about two to three percent of the market share in Northern California, the big guys have 97…they can afford to give up a few percentage points for us small guys..”
Thanks to Sean and Jaqueleen for allowing me to come in and chat and for being so open. Sean also gave me taste of a Sherry Cask Whiskey that will be ready in another year. At one year in and cask strength, this stuff was amazing, so definitely keep an eye out for it. In the meantime, you can find some Venus Spirits at the Half Moon Bay New Leaf or go visit them in person in the Westside area of Santa Cruz. If you’re interested in some of the experimental things they do you can join their club for the chance at some limited edition stuff.
Have Fun Cooking (and sipping)!
Stuart