[Avodah] Selling whiskey/bourbon

[Micha Berger]

On Tue, Mar 23, 2010 at 01:01:06PM -0700, Simon Montagu wrote:
: > Im kein ein ladavar sof: Those two are done years apart. But what if they
: > were minutes apart? Simple solution to making peas for Ashkenazim. Put
: > up the peas, and some point during cooking, add more water.
: 
: I don't follow this at all. Which "two" are done years apart and why
: should that make a difference? As long as the taarovet itself is made
: before Pesach, who cares how many years the chametz existed as chametz
: before that (assuming that it wasn't owned by a Jew during Pesach in
: the years when it was in the cask).

The mash was made before aging, I presume years before the water was
added a second time.

The question is whether it's taaroves at all, not whether the taaroves
needs to be before or even during Pesach.

: The peas case is completely different because there you have discrete
: solids floating around in water...

To make whisky, you take barley, let it sprout a little (1mm or 2 of
rootlets) in water, kiln-dry it to stop the malting. This is "malted
barley". You then crush the malted barley into grist, which is like
a course flour, and mixed with hot water. The grist steeps until it
becomes a mash. This is quite probably halachic dough. The starch in the
mash decomposes into sugar, and the result is wort. Wort is mixed with
yeast, so that the yeast can process all that sugar to make the alcohol.
The result is called "wash", and is basically a pretty bad primitive
version of beer.

Notice that at this point, you have course flour, water and yeast floating
around together. How this isn't chameitz gamur is beyond me.

At this point it's distilled (usually twice), which is when R' Galley
says it stops being chameitz since distilling by definition separates
out the alcohol.

To finish the story:
Then they put it in oak casks. (RMF allows the use of sherry, port and
casks, despite later chumeros some want to start.) And there it ages.

There is no mention on any of the half-dozen web sites I went to of
boiling the mash, nor do I know why boiling mash is better than boiling
noodles at not producing chameitz.

I wonder if the "boiling" you heard was the same distillation (which
boils out the alcohol, leaving the water et al below) that RRW mentioned
besheim R' Galley.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             When faced with a decision ask yourself,
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Fax: (270) 514-1507                            - Rav Yisrael Salanter