American By Nino Marchetti / February 25, 2015 The guys over at Seven Stills distillery out of San Francisco, California are on a mission to make whiskey that is offbeat. I first heard of this small operation last year when we covered the debut of its Chocasmoke expression. This bottling, made from an actual craft beer recipe, proved pretty popular to drinkers far and wide as the first offering in Seven Stills’ Seven Hills series. Dedicated to creating a unique whiskey inspired by each of the seven hills of San Francisco, the series is now onto bottling number two, known as Fluxuate.The 47% ABV Fluxuate is a limited edition, 375 ml release made from a coffee porter beer recipe using a popular craft coffee from nearby Berkeley. Think of it as sort of the reverse of putting whiskey in your coffee in the morning. It prices in the range of $35 to $40, according to Seven Stills, and is seeing distribution not only in California, but also in select retailers outside of the distillery’s home state of operations.A coffee porter whiskey, taste profile wise, is likely to be a pretty unique animal and, sure enough, it is. Seven Stills told me of the flavors that it is “really heavy on the roasted malt and doensn’t have a ton of coffee, but it really comes through. It’s really interesting because the coffee and oak/sweet vanilla, come through heavy in the nose and then it finishes with the dark roasted notes from the barley, so it almost has the coffee flavors throughout. And then it’s a pretty medium-heavy body, thick/slick palate, smooth finish.”
