This story starts about a year ago when we first were talking with the mysterious crafters at Moses Lake Distillery about a potential collaboration bottle. Naturally we liked the idea of an Irish Death Whiskey, and Moses Lake Distillery’s Zach Hughes & Joe Ketterer seemed like the right team to do it justice. So we hooked them up with a few barrels of finished Irish Death, they got to work on the distillery alchemy stuff that turns it into liquor, and then it came time to figure out the label for the bottle.
Given that I do the graphic design for the brewery and create our beer labels, I raised my hand to offer my services.
Problem #1.
We can’t call it Irish Death Whiskey. Kind of like you can’t just call any old sparkling wine “champagne” unless it comes from the Champagne region of France. Or tequila; if it’s not from Mexico you can’t put the word “tequila” on the bottle. In the eyes of the booze cops, the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB), putting the word “Irish” anywhere on this bottle of whiskey would be considered false advertising since it’s not an Irish whiskey. So the first hurdle was coming up with a name that doesn’t feature any mention of Ireland.
Fine. I’ve seen Peaky Blinders. I’m not about to piss off the Irish. But given the beer is called Irish Death this made for a unique challenge. So Joe and I went back and forth on some different names. Here are a few of my favorites:
- Death Touch Whiskey
- Celt-ish Death Whiskey
- Compliant Death Whiskey
- Banshee’s Breath
- Red Tape Death Whiskey
- Censored Death Whiskey
- Redacted Death Whiskey
In the end we agreed that “Redacted Death” was the best option. I was confident that I could make the label look very clearly like Irish Death with the skull, and then just put a big red “REDACTED” over the word “Irish.” Cool, problem solved.
But the thing is, we made this decision sometime in March of 2025 – about 9 months prior to when the word “redacted” started showing up a lot more in the news. You may recall that in December of 2025 there were a bunch of files “released” to the public, which were heavily redacted.
So just to be clear, the name “redacted death” is absolutely not a reference to Epstein. Just an unfortunate coincidence. K, moving on to:
Problem #2
We submitted version one of the label to the TTB for approval and they came back with some requested revisions. Easy enough, make the words “GOVERNMENT WARNING” bigger, change the wording in a couple places, then we resubmit the label for approval. But the TTB shot back again when they learned about the process Moses Lake Distillery went through in the creation of this non-Irish beverage.
Traditional whiskeys are made from 3 ingredients: water, cereal grains, and yeast. But to get the best flavor out of this particular whiskey, Moses Lake Distillery also utilized hops, which is not one of those three whiskey ingredients, and which made the TTB throw a fit and ask us to not call it a whiskey at all.
Son of a bitch. By now I’ve made three or four versions of the label so opening Adobe Illustrator back up wasn’t the end of the world, but I was feeling frustration towards the fun-police and I was especially pissy because this WHOLE TIME we could have called it Irish Death something after all because according to the TTB it’s not even a whiskey. Son of a bitch.
In the end, the TTB requested I put the words “SPIRITS DISTILLED FROM GRAIN WITH HOPS” under the “REDACTED DEATH” name. Really rolls off the tongue.
So that’s why our collaboration with Moses Lake Distillery is technically called “Redacted Death Spirits Distilled from Grain with Hops.” I don’t know if “Irish Death Spirits Distilled from Grain with Hops” is much better, but let’s be real everyone is already calling it “Irish Death Whiskey.” I’m just not allowed to put those words on the bottle.
Joe brought Redacted Death to Eastern Washington Brewfest 2026 for its debut pouring and it was loved by all. I have a bottle sitting on my desk staring at me now, triggering my TTB PTSD, but it was all worth it in the end when Joe gifted me a shirt for the work I did on the label. It’s my new favorite shirt and has an image of the Redacted Death label with text above it that reads “TTB renamed my dog.”
If you’re looking for a bottle to pick up, these details will be shared soon on our social media pages. We started this collaboration as a small limited release batch, but because the initial feedback from tastings has been so overwhelming, Moses Lake Distillery and IHB are coming back together to discuss a larger batch and wider distribution. Stay tuned.
