Have you ever been in one of those relationships where you keep breaking up and getting back together with your boyfriend/girlfriend?
On the one hand, they make life so much more interesting and complex. They’re addictive. They’re unique. You can’t get enough of them because they’re unlike anything you’ve ever experienced before.
On the other hand, they’re addictive quality is toxic and every time you see them you feel terrible the next day.
If this sounds eerily familiar, then you’re going to love congeners.
What Are Congeners?
To simplify, the word ‘congener’ is an umbrella term for all the substances produced during fermentation other than the alcohol used to make whisky (this is known as ethanol). Just like ‘whisky’ is an umbrella terms that covers bourbon, scotch, rye, and others, ‘congeners’ can include many things including esters, aldehydes, fusel oils and more.
Why Are Congeners Important?
Congeners are important because they contribute to the overall flavour profile of a whisky.
During distillation, the distiller separates the resulting liquid into three parts (also called fractions) known as the heads, hearts and tails. Whisky is made using the “hearts” fraction which is comprised mostly of ethanol. However, there are also small quantities of other chemicals in the ‘hearts.’ All of these chemicals can be considered congeners.
Congeners will provide unique flavours to the whisky, however, they can be toxic in large quantities which is why they are mostly separated out during distillation.
If we think about alcoholic beverages that are extremely flavourful like whisky (and in particular bourbon), tequila, cognac and red wine, all of these are high in congeners.
On the other hand, purer spirits like vodka, gin and white wine, all have lower levels of congeners in them.
Just to re-iterate, with congener-rich spirits there will be more unique and complex flavour profiles, however, they are technically toxins and so they have been found to increase the likelihood of a hangover. A study was conducted and found that bourbon was much more likely to induce a hangover than vodka. When tested, they found that the bourbon used in the study had 34x more congeners in it than the vodka.
Will I Avoid Hangovers If I Only Drink Vodka/Gin?
While whisk(e)y does have higher levels of congeners which do contribute to hangovers, ethanol itself also contributes to your hangover. So if you’re drinking vodka/gin in small quantities, you’ll probably be fine but if you decide to drink in excess, you are still likely to have a hangover the next day.
Use Congener In a Sentence
New to tasting whisky? If you are at a whisky tasting and aren’t yet able to identify individual flavour characteristics in a whisky, but notice that the whisky smells very intense, you can definitely say something like:
“Wow, the nose on [insert whisky you’re drinking here] seems very congener rich.”
And if you’re looking for more tasting descriptors, check out the Beginner’s Whisky Wheel I created here.
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