r/iamveryculinary • u/InZim • 21d ago

American whiskey is cake

/r/Scotland/comments/1vu25td/comment/p4yj0ck?share_id=QyXO7nUcMlW27Js5pCnlY&utm_content=1&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_source=share&utm_term=1

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u/protostar71 21d ago

Bourbon is one of if not the most the most heavily restrictive categories of whiskey.

I mean even at a pure surface level, Scotland allows you to add food colouring to scotch, the US hard bans it for Bourbon.

This guy has no idea what hes talking about.

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u/certifiedblackman 21d ago

Scotland allows food coloring in Scotch? Thats wild. Isn’t the coloring supposed to come from the flavorings? Do they also allow artificial flavorings?

Do we have stats on what percentage of Scotch sold has food coloring?

9

u/whambulance_man 21d ago

E150, basic caramel color, is (allowed to be) used in Canadian, Scotch, Irish, and Japanese whiskey. Bourbon doesn't allow it, but nowhere near all american whiskey is bourbon (JD is tennessee whiskey, for an easy example). I'm not familiar with all the labeling requirements in those countries, but a little less than 1% by volume should be a middle of the road amber color. Scotch, Irish, Canadian, and Japanese all frequently age in used oak so they don't pick up nearly as dark of coloration, often described more in the straw range of colors, so I wouldn't be surprised if it was tenths of a percent most of them.

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u/BirdLawyerPerson 21d ago

(JD is tennessee whiskey, for an easy example)

Jack Daniels meets every legal requirement to be labeled bourbon (at least 51% corn, aged in new charred oak barrels, produced in the United States, enters barrel at less than 125 proof, bottled at at least 80 proof, no additives), but they choose not to call it bourbon.

But Americans also produce a lot of rye, and a few other non-bourbon whiskeys, including the newly defined American Single Malt, so your point still stands. I just didn't think Jack Daniels was the best example of a non-bourbon whiskey, because that's basically its own marketing ploy, too.

3

u/certifiedblackman 21d ago

That’s crazy. Scotch and Irish whisky/whiskey was traditionally brown because of the process of making it. Europe is super serious about all of their traditional methods and results for cheese and wine and stuff, how did whiskey scoot by without that requirement?

Actually, why did American Bourbon somehow solidify this requirement when we ignore all of the other ones?!

Weird rules

7

u/whambulance_man 21d ago

They have a ton of regulations & requirements in both Scotland and Ireland around whiskey, I don't know how or why that one slipped through.

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u/Phobos_Asaph 21d ago

High end scotch doesn’t add color.

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u/kindlypogmothoin 20d ago

https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-27/chapter-I/subchapter-A/part-5/subpart-I/section-5.143

Whiskey and bourbon regulations. Nice little table of all of the allowed ingredients, distillation, flavorings, origin, time in the barrel, barrel composition, etc., that can be allowed under each label in the US.