Every September, distillers and maltsters across the country mark Craft Malt Month, a shoutout to the small operations that turn raw barley into the base of everything that gets fermented and distilled into whiskey. This year, Seattle's Copperworks Distilling Co. is marking the occasion with something it has never done before: a whiskey aged entirely in a used rye whiskey barrel, released as a single cask, and tied to a charitable donation that sends money straight back to the people who grow and malt the grain.
The release is called Copperworks Craft Malt Month 2026 American Single Malt Whiskey, Single Cask No. 488, and it's a bottle built around a fairly simple idea: where the barley comes from matters just as much as what happens to it in a still.
A Cask That's New Territory for the Distillery
Copperworks has built its reputation on single malt whiskey, but this release breaks from the pattern in one specific way. The whiskey spent 5 years and 9 months maturing in a cask that had previously held rye whiskey, something the distillery has never bottled before. Most of its releases lean on new oak or other typical whiskey barrels, so putting a batch through a rye-seasoned cask for nearly six years is a departure worth noting for anyone tracking how the distillery's flavor profile evolves over time.
The whiskey was bottled at its natural cask strength, meaning nothing was added to bring the alcohol level down to a standard proof. That puts it at 63.2% ABV, or 126.4 proof, well above what most drinkers are used to seeing on a shelf. Cask strength bottlings like this one are typically made in small batches specifically because they showcase the barrel's influence without any dilution smoothing things out.
Barley With a Track Record
The grain behind this release isn't a random pick. It's Baronesse barley grown at Joseph's Grainery in Colfax, Washington, and malted by LINC Malt in Spokane. That's the same barley variety that went into Copperworks' first Farmsmith release, a whiskey built to highlight what happens when a distillery sources barley from a single variety, a single farm, and a single year rather than blending grain from multiple sources. That earlier Farmsmith bottling picked up a gold medal, which gives this new cask some pedigree to live up to.
Farmsmith as a whole is Copperworks' way of putting Washington's barley fields front and center, and the distillery has leaned into that idea by rotating through different farms and barley varieties to show how much the source material shapes the final spirit. Baronesse, grown in the wheat and barley country around Colfax in eastern Washington, has now shown up in two notable releases from the distillery, giving drinkers a chance to compare how the same grain behaves in different casks.
From Farm to Malthouse
Colfax sits in the Palouse region, an area known more for wheat than for whiskey, but Joseph's Grainery has become a supplier that craft distillers keep coming back to. Once the barley leaves the farm, it heads to LINC Malt in Spokane, a craft malthouse responsible for turning the raw grain into the malted barley that actually gets mashed and fermented. That relationship between a single farm and a single malthouse is exactly the kind of small-scale, traceable supply chain that Craft Malt Month was created to celebrate in the first place.
What Ends Up in the Glass
Tasting notes on a cask strength release always come with the caveat that a splash of water can open things up differently for every drinker, but Copperworks has laid out what to expect from Cask No. 488 in some detail.
On the nose, the whiskey leads with orange sorbet and pineapple, moving into honeyed oats, toasted marshmallow, and a touch of cassis. The palate brings sweet cream, cookie dough, and golden raisin alongside Mexican vanilla and cocoa nib. The finish is where the rye cask seems to leave its clearest fingerprint, with dried apricot and Meyer lemon joined by clove and sweet cinnamon, plus a subtle briny note that lingers after the sweetness fades. That combination of fruit-forward sweetness up front and a spicier, saltier finish is consistent with what a lot of drinkers look for in a rye-cask-finished spirit, even when the base whiskey itself is a single malt rather than a rye.
Where the Money Goes
Beyond the barley and the barrel, this release comes with a charitable component built directly into the price. Copperworks is donating $10 from every bottle sold straight to the Craft Maltsters Guild, an organization made up of independent, small-batch maltsters working to keep artisanal malting alive in a market dominated by a handful of massive industrial producers.
The Guild describes itself as a grassroots effort to bring back diversity and regional character to malting, uniting small malthouses under what it calls the Craft Malt Revolution. It also runs a Craft Malt Certified Seal program, launched in 2019, which helps drinkers and brewers identify products made with Guild-member malt. A donation tied to bottle sales gives that organization direct funding tied to a product that already depends on the exact kind of craft malting it's trying to protect, which is a more concrete connection than a lot of cause-marketing tie-ins manage.
The Practical Details
This is a limited single cask release, bottled at 700ml, with only one barrel's worth of whiskey to go around, so supply is inherently capped at however many bottles Cask No. 488 produced. It's priced at $89.99 before tax and shipping. Because of state alcohol shipping laws, Copperworks has noted it cannot ship this release to a number of states, so anyone interested should check availability for their location before assuming a bottle is on its way.
Given that it's a single cask release tied to a limited-time seasonal promotion, this isn't the kind of bottle that gets restocked once it sells out. Once Cask No. 488 is gone, that particular combination of Baronesse barley, rye cask maturation, and cask strength bottling won't be repeated exactly the same way again, even if Copperworks puts out other rye-cask releases down the road.
Why a Barrel Swap Is a Bigger Deal Than It Sounds
American single malt whiskey has spent the last several years establishing itself as its own category, separate from bourbon, rye, and Scotch, with distilleries like Copperworks pushing to show what the style can do outside the rules that govern Scotch production. Part of that experimentation involves cask selection, and using a used rye whiskey barrel instead of new oak or a bourbon barrel gives the whiskey a different starting point for how it picks up color, spice, and wood character over time.
For a distillery that's built its identity around barley sourcing and single malt production, trying a rye cask for the first time is a small but telling signal that there's still room to expand what a Washington-made single malt can taste like. Pair that with a direct donation to the group representing the small maltsters who supply grain to craft distillers across the country, and this release ends up doing double duty: it's both a new flavor experiment and a direct investment in the supply chain that makes releases like it possible in the first place.
