.

Same age. Same proof. One clear, one amber. Both whiskey

Hold a glass of CAVU Spirits up to the light. It looks like vodka. Crystal clear. Not a hint of color. You’d swear it’s unaged.

Now smell it. That’s aged whiskey. Oak. Vanilla. Complexity. The unmistakable character of time in a barrel.

Taste it. Everything you want from barrel aging. The depth. The finish. The layers that only come from years in wood.

This shouldn’t exist.

Whiskey color comes from barrels. Filter to remove the color, and you remove the flavor. That’s been the industry wisdom for 200 years.

But with AI’s help, we think we proved that wisdom wrong.

THE QUESTION THAT STARTED EVERYTHING

Last week I told you about 40 Winks – the whiskey that made grown men cry. The whiskey we’ve been trying to recreate for three years.

But what made 40 Winks so good? It wasn’t just what it HAD. It was also what it DIDN’T have.

It had: Two years of first barrel aging. Oak character. Complexity. Depth.

It didn’t have: Rye burn. Harsh tannins. The sharp edges that come from aggressive barrel contact. The Second New Barrel Aging built on that great baseline without the over-oaking that can happen with Typical Double Barreled Spirits.

That California distillery that had made it, had somehow removed the bad while keeping the good. And they did it using vacuum distillation – a process almost nobody in the spirits industry understood.

I had to figure out how.

THE TOOL: VACUUM DISTILLATION

Traditional distilling uses heat. LOTS OF HEAT. Our Traditional Stills use electricity to produce that heat, and the local electric company loves me for that. (I have the Power bills to prove it!) You heat a liquid to its boiling point, the alcohol vaporizes, you collect it and cool it back down.

The problem? Heat changes things.

At 173°F (the boiling point of ethanol at normal pressure), delicate aromatics get destroyed. Some flavor compounds break down. Others that weren’t there before get created. You can’t separate with precision – it’s like using a sledgehammer when you need a scalpel. A rotary evaporator – rotovap for short – uses vacuum instead.

Here’s how it works:

Lower the pressure, you lower the boiling point. At the right vacuum level, ethanol boils at 86°F instead of 173°F. That’s barely warm to the touch. At that temperature, nothing gets destroyed. It’s a process we are quite familiar with as we have been using it to capture fresh flavors for our Cucumber and Horseradish Vodka for 5 years.

Used slightly differently, the delicate esters from fermentation? Preserved. The oak character from barrel aging? Intact. The aromatic compounds that give whiskey its character? All still there.

But here’s where it gets interesting: Different compounds vaporize at different temperatures and pressures. Even at low heat. Change the temperature by 2 degrees – from 84°F to 86°F – and you’re separating completely different compounds. We learned this early on when capturing the essence of the different herbs we grow on our farm. Every herb/vegetable/spice needs a different Temperature/Pressure/Alcohol content to maximize extraction.

In this setting, this means you can selectively remove specific things while leaving everything else behind. Want to remove color compounds (tannins, wood sugars, char particles) but keep flavor esters? There’s a temperature for that. Want to remove harsh fusel alcohols but keep the smooth congeners? There’s a pressure setting for that. Want to remove the “rye burn” that made 40 Winks so smooth while preserving the grain character? That takes precision. Precision we have learned over the last 5 years. But it’s possible.

In aviation, we call this “precision flying.” You’re not using brute force. You’re using the exact right tool with exact settings to achieve an exact result.

WHERE AI CAME IN

I understood the principle. We have been doing it for years. I knew vacuum distillation could selectively separate compounds. But I didn’t know WHERE to start in this context. Traditional distilling: You heat to 173°F and collect what comes over. Simple. Vacuum distilling at low temperature: You have 40 different temperature points between 75°F and 110°F, each with 10 different vacuum pressure settings, and every combination separates different compounds. That’s 400 possible combinations. Even testing one combination per day would take over a year.

So I turned to AI.

I fed it everything I knew:

  • The chemical composition of barrel-aged bourbon
  • The molecular weights of different flavor compounds
  • The boiling points of esters, tannins, fusel alcohols, and congeners at various pressures
  • The TTB definition of what makes something “whiskey”
  • The tasting notes from 40 Winks (what we wanted to preserve)

The AI couldn’t taste. It couldn’t tell me if something would be “good.” But it could calculate. It analyzed the data and predicted: “If you want to preserve barrel character while removing color and harshness, try vacuum distillation at XX°F with pressure at XX millibars. Start there.”

I started there. Some predictions panned out, others did not. But through a continuous feedback loop, we were able narrow down the parameters we needed.

THE TEST RUNS

My first test was aggressive. I took a 95% rye whiskey – extremely high rye content – and ran it through the rotovap because AI predicted it would have the best results. The result? Clear spirit. Definitely aged character. But the rye was still too dominant. (AI Got that one wrong) The “burn” was reduced but not gone. Too extreme.

I adjusted. Lower rye content. 25% rye instead of 95%. Better. Much better. The rye spice was there, but balanced. The harshness was gone. The oak character was intact. But the real breakthrough came when I ran our 25% wheat bourbon through the rotovap. I pulled the sample. Crystal clear. Held it up to the light. No color at all. Put my nose in the glass. Wheat. Honey. Vanilla. Oak. Everything that makes wheated bourbon special.

Tasted it.

Smooth. Complex. Layers of flavor. Everything you want from aged whiskey. And Better than the spirit we started with (Our already popular Silent Wings Whiskey) AND… clear. That’s when I knew: CAVU Spirits could be a hit.

THE SECOND DISCOVERY

But something else happened during those test runs.

I had problem barrels sitting in the warehouse. The over-aged maple finish barrel I mentioned in Part 1 – the one we forgot about for 3 years instead of 3 months. So intense it was undrinkable. Industry standard: dump it. Five years of aging wasted. But if the rotovap could remove color while keeping flavor… what if it could remove TOO MUCH maple while keeping the RIGHT AMOUNT of maple?

I ran a sample. The result? The overwhelming maple intensity was gone. But the maple character remained. Balanced. Integrated. Exactly what a maple finish should taste like.

That’s when I knew: CAVU Refined Spirits could be a hit.

We’d discovered two completely new and different applications of the same technology.

TWO PRODUCT LINES, ONE BREAKTHROUGH

CAVU SPIRITS:

Taking already-great spirits and transforming them into something nobody else has. Clear aged whiskey that actually tastes aged.

We’re using spirits that are already good – starting with our wheated whiskey, and creating a visual/flavor experience that’s unique in the industry. These aren’t problem barrels. These are premium spirits intentionally transformed. Think of it as the ultimate expression of the distiller’s craft: all the complexity of barrel aging, none of the visual bias. You taste it blind, you’d swear it’s been in oak for years. You see it, you’d swear it’s unaged.

My favorite activity over the last 2 weeks has been using CAVU Wheat to make a crystal clear “Old Fashioned” and presenting it to our confused regular customers. I typically get a “What is that?” with a skeptical look. Then comes the look of sheer amazement when they realize it is a “Clear” version of their favorite drink! It’s just “plane” fun to mess with their heads and taste buds.

CAVU REFINED SPIRITS:

Taking problem barrels – spirits that would normally be dumped or hidden in blends – and rescuing them. Removing what went wrong while preserving what went right. That over-aged maple barrel. The 5-year rum with overwhelming molasses. The experimental mash bills that didn’t balance. We can fix them now.

These aren’t “salvage” spirits. These are rescued premium releases. Limited availability. Unique flavor profiles you literally cannot replicate because they came from barrels that failed in interesting ways.

WHY “CAVU”?

CAVU is an aviation term: “Ceiling And Visibility Unlimited.” It means perfect flying conditions. Clear skies. Unlimited visibility. Every pilot’s dream. (well except for an old instructor or mine we will call “STU”. He loved cloudy days and subjecting me to “Partial Panel flying”, but that’s a story for a different time/place)

That’s what these spirits are: whiskey with unlimited clarity. The ceiling removed. Everything visible. Plus, it describes what they look like: Clear. And. Visibly. Uncolored. The name works on every level.

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOU

In March 2026, we’re releasing the first CAVU Spirits to the public. Limited first release. 75 bottles of CAVU Wheated Whiskey. Clear as vodka, aged like bourbon, smooth as anything we’ve ever made. Later releases will include CAVU Refined Maple Whiskey (that rescued barrel), CAVU Refined RUM, and potentially others as we continue testing.

These aren’t novelty spirits. These aren’t gimmicks. This is a genuine breakthrough in distilling technology. And we’re the only distillery in America doing it.

You’ll be able to taste the impossible.

WHAT’S COMING NEXT

This week I’ve shown you WHAT we created and HOW the technology works.

Next week: THE BARREL RESCUE PROJECT

I’ll tell you about the disasters. The barrels that should have been dumped. The thousands of dollars in failed experiments. And how we turned every single one into something worth releasing. Because once you can selectively remove compounds, you can fix almost anything.

See you next Monday.

Tim Ford
Master Distiller
Barnstormer Distillery

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