Shakers American Wheat Vodka

Shakers has been around a bit, established in 2003, sharing some talent with the folks who brought Pete’s Wicked Ale to prominence. Perhaps as part of this association, the vodka is distilled from beer, which yields some results which are a bit nonstandard.

Nose: The nose has a slight alcohol burn with a sweet and light grainy-wheaty scent, and some notes of toasted whole wheat bread.

Taste: The mouth feel is a bit heavy and viscous with almost an oily feeling. There’s only light alcohol on the taste, with some sweet, some bitter and some trace of mineral salt tastes. There are hints of malt, as well. This is full and a bit heavy, as vodkas go.

Finish: The vodka finishes fairly smooth with no harshness or burn to the throat, but with traces of bitter, and some continuing mineral/salt notes linger for quite a while.

Notes: As vodkas go, this is rather far from a neutral spirit, regardless of the continuous distillation. In drinks that you want the flavor of the vodka to really show through, or if the drink is going to have a lot of orange juice, Shakers might be fine. But I don’t believe this will make a particularly good sweet or delicate vodka drink.

Shakers American Wheat Vodka, (Infinite Spirits, Minneapolis, MN), 80 Proof, $20.95 (750ml) at Oregon Liquor Stores

(Sample provided by Infinite Spirits.)