No buzzword has done as much heavy lifting (or, arguably, damage) for whiskey as “innovation.” It’s used to describe everything from cask finishes to wild packaging to different proofs. Whenever a brand comes up with a new product, it’s “innovative”—even if three dozen other brands have recently done something similar.

Much like the term “small batch,” which might describe a batch of two barrels or 200, “innovation” is so overused that it’s become effectively meaningless. And it’s actually okay that more whiskies aren’t truly innovative. Distillers have spent hundreds of years perfecting their process. They know what works and they stick to it because it yields delicious whiskey people like to drink.

At this point it would seem that there’s very little new ground to break. But there’s still some! The folks below are trying out unusual techniques and pioneering new processes—or reviving lost ones—to create whiskey that’s genuinely unique and interesting. And not just that: It's tasty too — well worth trying not just on the merits of its creativity but for the flavors you won't find elsewhere. Keep reading to discover these true whiskey innovations.

Brother Justus Cold Peated American Single Malt

Peat usually finds its way into whiskey at the malting stage, when barley is dried over a peat fire, or sometimes by maturing in casks that formerly held peated scotch. Either way, Scottish peat typically expresses itself with notes of smoke, ash, seaweed, and brine.

A handful of American craft distillers have begun using native peat to express more local provenance in their whiskies, but they’ve all followed the usual model of burning the peat during malting. Except for Brother Justus. The Minneapolis distillery has instead pioneered a completely novel means of flavoring its whiskey with native boreal forest peat, dubbing it the “Aitken County Process.”

Rather than burning the peat, Brother Justus uses it as infusion, allowing it to gently steep in single malt whiskey. This preserves and highlights delicate botanical notes, creating a sweet woodsiness in the spirit. It offers drinkers the opportunity to experience peat in a totally new way—smoke-free, emphasizing its organic plant matter—with the added benefit of being better for the environment.

FEW Cold Cut Bourbon and Immortal Rye

Though technically not whiskey, this pair merits a mention because of the innovation’s simplicity and how delightfully surprising it is. FEW Spirits, located in the Chicago suburb of Evanston, decided to proof down its bourbon and rye using not water, but coffee and tea, respectively.

The results are two whiskies that seamlessly meld their inherent flavor and character with the unorthodox add-ins. For Cold Cut, the roasty bittersweetness of coffee flows into FEW bourbon’s underlying pepper and spice notes, filling in blank spaces with the ease of a skillful watercolorist. FEW rye’s sharp herbaceousness, meanwhile, gets softened and layered by the elegant nuance of oolong tea when transformed into Immortal rye.

To be clear, these aren’t flavored whiskies like Fireball or Crown Royal Peach. There’s no sugar or artificial flavorings. Neither Cold Cut nor Immortal tastes like there’s added “flavoring” at all, in fact, because they’re so well balanced. Both could easily fool an expert (and have!) into thinking they’re drinking straight whiskey that’s achieved its complexity through creative barrel aging or grain selection.

Koji Whiskey

Making alcohol requires sugar for yeast to feed on. In whiskey’s case, sugar gets unlocked from the base grains through a process called saccharification, usually accomplished by adding enzymes during mashing or using a recipe with malted barley, which naturally contains such enzymes.

But in Japan, a mold called koji, when mixed with grain, can free the sugars all on its own. It works in concert with yeast, adding to the flavors developed during fermentation. The process is ancient and has been used for sake and shochu, along with many Japanese foods, for hundreds of years. Now it’s being applied to whiskey—both Japanese and American, including bourbon.

There’s precedent for koji in American whiskey: Japanese distiller Jokichi Takamine pioneered the process in the 1890s, though he ran up against the bullying of the infamous Whiskey Trust and his work was forgotten for over a century. In recent years, however, craft distillers have rediscovered Takamine’s research and employed koji for their own contemporary spirits.

WhistlePig has a small koji propagator and used it to create koji rye for The Boss Hog VIII: The Samurai Scientist. Matchbook Distilling is aging a few barrels of koji bourbon, which it will eventually release. And a couple of years ago FEW Spirits released Cereal Killer straight rye, made with rye and wheat mixed with a rice-based koji. These whiskies aren’t at all alike, but each has layers of extraordinary flavor, totally set apart from what’s usual and expected.

Lost Spirits Seascape II Malt Whiskey

This now-shuttered distillery made waves in the spirits industry with its “THEA One reactor,” a technology that used light to rapidly mature whiskey and rum in just a few days. Many wrote it off as a gimmick, although there was real substance to the process, and the resulting spirits stood up in blind tastings.

Alternative aging wasn’t the only part of the process that founder Bryan Davis—who designed theme park rides before becoming a distiller—toyed around with. Early on, he built a wooden log still, a rudimentary piece of equipment found in early America, to create “steam bourbon.” And he went wild with fermentation—literally, not just through the use of different yeasts, but by fermenting malt with salt water from the Pacific Ocean.

The resulting whiskey, Seascape II, was distinctly marine, briny, and (oddly enough) earthy, with strong smokiness from Canadian peat, which Davis imparted on the grain using a hand-built smoker. There were only a couple hundred bottles produced and Davis won’t be making more. But there’s nothing stopping another distiller from trying it out.

Leopold Brothers Three Chamber Still Rye

Still design usually falls into three camps: pot stills, which work in a batch process, continuous (column) stills, and modern hybrids that blend the two. There was once another type of still, popular for making rye: the three-chamber still. It worked continuously, but its design meant that the distillation process went much slower, preserving more flavors, aromas, and, crucially, oils from the grain.

Though once common, three-chamber stills disappeared during Prohibition. But Todd Leopold, cofounder of Leopold Bros. Distillery, discovered old documents about them and the style of whiskey that they created. He commissioned Vendome Copper & Brass Works to build a new three-chamber whiskey still, which he used to distill Abruzzi rye, an heirloom variety known for its intense florals.

The spirit aged in new charred oak and was first released in 2021 as a bottled-in-bond. It’s an astonishing whiskey, utterly unlike anything else distilled in the modern era: extremely oily to the point of viscosity, with flavors of orange marmalade and lavender, and a pungent aroma. If you’re used to drinking Kentucky-style or MGP rye, Three-Chamber comes as a shock. But it’s a mind-opening experience, an exercise in imagination. If whiskey can taste like this, just by modifying the distillation equipment, how much further can we push it?