Caramel | Malt | Clover honey | Honey graham cracker | Pretzel roll | Potent

Light cinnamon sugar | Honeycomb | Light roasted malt | Pear

Burnt butter | Leather | Toasted oak | Dash of pepper

Copperworks Distilling Co. is a distillery located in downtown Seattle, Washington, and has been operating since 2013. Copperworks Maltsmith starts as a craft beer (without hops) made from barley grown in and around Washington. It is then distilled twice in traditional copper stills handcrafted for the distillery by the leading maker of Scottish pot stills, Forsyths. The company ages their whiskeys in a temperature-controlled warehouse. Copperworks focuses on single malt whiskey, and variables across releases include the variety of barley, aging time, and characteristics of barrels used for aging.

Copperworks Maltsmith is “distilled from a brewer-style recipe” that combines pale malt and caramelized malts. From there it combines whiskey from 14 new oak casks and six refilled Copperworks Maltsmith American Single Malt casks to form the company’s flagship American single malt. The first thing you’ll notice is how easy drinking this American single malt is. It skews sweet with ample amounts of honey and caramel present, but offsets it with precise amounts of roasted malt, burnt butter, toasted oak, leather, and pepper. Though it’s malt forward, it does a great job of being approachable especially to those new to the style of whiskey. That’s not to say malt lovers won’t find anything to enjoy, quite the contrary. Copperworks does a great job layering in aspects of the different malts used to create this whiskey. Though it lacks some refinement and sophistication that you find from other notable American single malt producers, there's no denying that it is a very well put together American single malt that’s hard to put down.