The Bog Water Toad

Welcome! This is the first entry for the Bog Water Toad project. Our aim is to produce a small batch peated pure pot still whiskey from start to finish using quintessentially Californian ingredients. That means we'll be procuring and malting our own barley, peating it ourselves with Northern Californian turf, welding our own copper pot still to our own design preferences, and aging the product in casks seasoned with Napa valley residue.

Why the bog water toad? Because the dubious characters involved all hang around this place: http://berkeleystudentcooperative.org/houses/kingman-hall

All four of the project's founding members are fans of possibly the two most cultish subgenres in the world of whiskey: smokey Islay Scotch and spicy Pure Pot Still Irish whiskey. When we decided to stop drinking and make something of our own, we knew that we'd want to create a unique dram that would weld our favorite aspects of these styles together in a way that simultaneously reflected our own Californian sensibilities, hailing as we all do from a co-op known for its food politics in a university known for its radical individualism on the fringe of a city that basically ignored prohibition from start to finish. We want it to be strange, complicated, and utterly intoxicating, just like Toad Hall itself.

So stick with us, give us your feedback, advice, and opinions as we stumble, stride, and drink our way to that most elusive amphibian and always remember, in the words of former Toad Hall regular Ken Kesey, never to let the fundamentalists take the fun out of mental.