117° West Spirits Is All About Malt
When Justin McCabe was finishing his PhD program in chemistry and environmental science at the University of California San Diego, he’d already been brewing beer at home for years. In 2007, as environmental science funding hit an all-time low and a case of academia burnout settled on McCabe, he began to explore career opportunities outside of policy planning and lab work.
He settled on—and fell in love with—teaching high school chemistry, but his longtime friends and home-brew guinea pigs encouraged him to open a brewery. McCabe also realized that his brewing chops put him in a good position to explore craft distilling from a new angle. Craft distillation was a much less saturated market than craft brewing in San Diego at the time, but still closely connected to the chemistry of brewing he had studied for years.
In 2016, when California law began allowing craft distilleries to sell spirits directly from tasting rooms under the Type 74 Craft Distiller’s license, McCabe took the leap and opened 117° West Whiskey in Vista, California, outside San Diego. With friends investing, managing the books, overseeing sales, and marketing the burgeoning business, McCabe put all his energy into distillation and sourcing a particularly unique range of raw materials.
“Malt is at the center of everything we do.” - Justin McCabe
Most distillers add a small amount of malt to their raw grain as a functional ingredient, taking advantage of natural enzymes released during the malting (sprouting) process to convert the grain’s starch to sugar (you don’t need much—the basic action of an enzyme is repeated many times over, so a little goes a long way). Unlike most distillers, McCabe makes whiskies that are distilled almost entirely from a malted grain mash. This, he says, lends a sweetness and roundness to his whiskies, and a unique focus on the flavor of the malted grain. With a nod to his environmental science background, McCabe sources sustainably-grown domestic and California grain through Admiral Maltings in Alameda, California—one of the only US traditional floor maltings. McCabe likes to refer to his style of whiskey as “mash to glass.”
The proof of the pudding is, in this case, in the drinking—like the rounded, rich palate of 117° West’s Rye Malt whiskey. The two-row barley McCabe uses is distilled off the grain—so there’s no husk component in the flavors selected and condensed by the still. Using two-row barley, malted rye, and distilling off the grain is kind of like treating this whiskey to a nice spa day, and the supple, approachable flavor shows it.
Small but Mighty: The Alexandria Pot Still
McCabe’s copper Alexandria pot still, custom-built by Henry Anderson in Coleville, Washington, uses on-steam distillation—a feature that McCabe says is crucial to his spirit production. “It injects steam directly into the wash or low wines that you’re distilling,” says McCabe. “That’s what heats the wash, but the steam won’t scorch and create off-flavors, resulting in very smooth spirits, very gentle.” And while his pot still may be on the small side for some craft distilleries, it is capable of an impressive, single-pass output and a two-to-four-hour distillation cycle. The Gatling column consists of fifty-seven half-inch copper tubes, encouraging some reflux in the columns for more efficient alcohol extraction. As any distiller will tell you, these efficiencies make all the difference to small craft enterprises by supporting higher yields and lower run times.
Slow and steady wins the race in this business, and McCabe’s proudest achievements so far are keeping the lights on and the stills running for seven years and making some very good whiskey in the process. 117° West recently opened its second tasting room in Vista at the CoLab Public House, where McCabe oversees all distillery and tasting room operations, from barrel selection to cocktail creation, all while continuing to teach high school chemistry part-time.
