Content
Citation(s) & Footnote(s)
Book(s)Full Source Review — 28 September 2026
All 239 physical PDF pages were read in sequence, including all 13 chapters, 123 endnotes, the bibliography, and author/publisher end matter. All pages were visually surveyed; 23 pages received enlarged inspection, including every numerical table and the principal diagrams and historical labels. No material unreadable content was identified. This supersedes the earlier passage-only coverage; it does not certify every assertion as true.
Bibliography
Stursa, Scott. Distilled in Oregon: A History & Guide with Cocktail Recipes. Foreword by Margarett Waterbury, e-book ed., American Palate, a division of The History Press, 2017.
ISBN 9781439659496; print ISBN 9781467137720. The 239-page supplied PDF is reflowed: its physical page numbers are file locators, not print-edition pagination. Introduction dated 22 August 2016; later passages explicitly reach 21 September 2016 (PDF 192), so “completed August 2016” is too absolute.
What This Source Adds
The historical chapters connect Oregon distilling to agricultural surplus, grain supply, transportation, taxation, temperance, and changing distribution. Newspaper accounts, census entries, contracts, Treasury files, memoirs, and interviews provide research leads of differing evidential strength. The modern chapters document reported production arrangements and the author's tastes in 2016; they are not a current directory.
- PDF 39–94: distinguish production, stored inventory, brand sales, registration, and corporate survival. Medford continued selling whiskey after distilling stopped (83–84).
- PDF 71–72 and 79–80: state grain totals support aggregate consumption; they do not establish every individual batch recipe. Company allocation and motives are often inferences.
- PDF 111–124: Prohibition accounts include memoir allegations and investigative records. Enforcement totals measure discoveries, not the entire illicit market.
- PDF 125–137: Hood River's transition from fruit distilling to sourcing/bottling is a useful historical production-role example. The 1943 state acquisition of Kentucky distilleries (135–136, note 95) is a promising primary-source research lead.
- PDF 138–149: the McCarthy chapter rests chiefly on a 21 May 2016 interview (note 96); capital, material origin, and sensory judgments must remain distinct.
- PDF 185–193: Hard Times closed in 2012, reopened in 2013, and remained active in the author's 2016 account. This is an atypical restructuring narrative, not a permanent-failure or industry-failure-rate finding.
- PDF 219–223: local-production certification, a distillery board, and incentives are author proposals. Six-year aging and standard-size-barrel preferences are opinions, not universal maturation rules.
Reliability and Reuse Limits
The technical primer is unsuitable as standalone scientific or safety instruction: boiling-mixture behavior, distillation strengths, enzyme conversion, category definitions, and several other explanations are oversimplified. Do not derive operating instructions from it. All historical/current-law claims require the appropriate dated primary authority before course use.
The claim on PDF 48 that the earlier internal taxes persisted until 1834 conflicts with the IRS's documented repeal on 23 December 1817. See IRS History Timeline, page 5. The repeated “IRS TTB” terminology also misstates agency organization: TTB's institutional history identifies the bureau created in Treasury in January 2003. The specific 1982 storekeeper narrative remains an unverified research lead.
The colonial chapters use outsider testimony and broad characterizations of Indigenous communities; neither attitudes nor population-loss explanations should be generalized without community and primary historical sources. Suspected arson is not proven attribution to prohibitionists. Absence from census or newspapers does not prove death or closure. Anonymous accusations on PDF 219 must remain unidentified and unproven.
Other flags: duplicate DSP-OR-20004 assigned to two producers in the text (210); a light-whiskey category does not identify its distiller (215–216); solera residence is not a uniform age statement (153); regional personality correlations do not demonstrate causes of business formation (195–197). Note 27 is a fictional scam joke, not historical evidence. Citation listings are leads, not evidence that their underlying works were read.
Academy Use
Appropriate for attributed regional-history examples, provenance exercises, and business-case discussion. Connect to the existing production-role and inventory-finance notes. Do not update live producer profiles, prices, legal guidance, or sensory standards from this historical snapshot.
Preservation
Original reference: /Volumes/Movies/Whiskey Books/Distilled in Oregon - Scott Stursa.pdf; 5,308,161 bytes; SHA-256 1fb49d8c717c4371a091c12a7b1dea54117f86b884ee3400fbefdb9b8c2f1b73. Original preserved. Local audit contains reading notes, page renders, and coverage manifest. Photographs have separate credits and are not republished by this review.
Source account
Stursa’s Clear Creek account shows a regional producer choosing imported peated malt for a desired whiskey style. His closing discussion separates local raw materials, fermentation, distillation, maturation, and bottling rather than treating every Oregon-associated spirit as equivalent.
The author advocates meaningful production disclosure while acknowledging that sourced spirits and further maturation involve different forms of work.
Evidence
PDF 142–143 and 219–221. Historical producer account and author commentary; current production and regulatory requirements not verified.
Researcher synthesis
Connect to the library’s production-role notes: a regional identity may refer to ingredients, production site, maturation, or a company’s location. Ask which meaning a claim actually supports before judging authenticity or sensory quality.
Existing library connection
Limits
The book’s normative preference and certification proposal are not enacted standards. Do not identify unnamed producers from the author’s suspicions or infer modern McCarthy’s specifications from the 2016 snapshot.
No access
Evidence map
- A local-ingredient commitment can conflict with a desired whiskey style · Citation
- Locality claims need production-stage definitions · Citation
