Let’s talk about class. I’ll be the teacher here, but this isn’t the grade school classroom. This is the class of spirits. In the previous post, I gently touched on touched on class being the big differentiator in spirits and today we’re going to get into what those classes are. This information comes from the code of federal regulation, or CFR, chapter 4, and there are 20 different types of classes. On this part we are going to look at neutral spirits and talk about what they really are and what they are not. Let’s get started with what the TTB says:
§5.22 The standards of identity.
Standards of identity for the several classes and types of distilled spirits set forth in this section shall be as follows (see also §5.35, class and type):
(a) Class 1; neutral spirits or alcohol. “Neutral spirits” or “alcohol” are distilled spirits produced from any material at or above 190° proof, and, if bottled, bottled at not less than 80° proof.
So what class 1 means is that you’ve made alcohol so potent that you could damn near put it in your lawnmower. It also means that it can be made from anything. You could make neutral spirits from any base product. You could make it from grain, from sugar, from fruit, etc. Hell, you could make it from Fruit Loops if you wanted too. Now lets delve into the different classes of Neutral Spirits.