Diary of a Distiller

In the past few weeks I have complained about how we have been held up for months waiting for the gas lines to be installed. Well they finally were. A simple job that took them three hours, but a several month wait for them to show up. Now at last we can finish ordering equipment and building the facility.

The distillery didn't look like much when we first started construction back at the beginning of February 2008. It had been a storage room for holding bottles and equipment for Winterport Winery and was just a big, barely used space with half finished walls, some painted and others just framed out.

As you see above in the rough blueprint of the floor plan, the facility is a decent size, but not too large. It's apx. 13x44 feet with a few extra areas at the front end under some stairs for storage and at the rear for sinks and a refrigerator for yeast and other supplies that need to be kept cool.

We were in no rush with the construction, because, although I had ordered the still in mid-December, it wouldn't be built and delivered until the end of March. But I was still in a hurry to try and get things done, although so many things were out of my control that I was totally stressed out all the time. To find out more, read on after the jump.

Follow up:

At the end of this post is a photo gallery of the start of the project. It shows framing and painting walls, and installing a special, explosion proof fan for evacuating volatile fumes. Installing the fan are my partners, Mike Anderson at the top of the ladder, and Jody Connor holding it for him. A friend, Fred, is priming a wall in one photo.

One of the biggest pains about building a distillery is that you need to have basically finished building your facility and have all equipment in place, before you can apply for your federal TTB permits. It's kind of crazy when you think about it. You go and invest anywhere from$100,000-$1,000,000+ in building a distillery and don't even know if and or when you will get your permit to operate. So here it is, June already, and we haven't even applied for our permit yet. When we started talking about this project back in late November 2007, I thought we would have our permit by Memorial Day. This might have been the case if the gas lines had been run in January, instead of late May. Now it looks like the gestation period for our distillery will be the same as for any child or calf, nine months... (My fingers are crossed, as are my toes.) Labor Day now sounds more reasonable. Then again, this is actually a very fast time frame. The average time from start to permit for a small distillery is usually a minimum of two years. So I have to look on the bright side of the still, so to speak.

Now that you have seen the start of the construction, I'll take you back in time to a bit more about how I got here.

I mentioned last week my painful experience working on a dairy farm. While I was going through all the surgery and physical therapy I visited many of my local farmers markets near where I lived in Westchester County, New York. I would chat with the farmers, and like normal for me my brain would start churning out ideas. I kept them to myself for as long as I could, but after a few weeks my brain was feeling swollen and sore. I was having trouble sleeping at night as my thoughts raced and new food business ideas kept forming.

One day I was at the farmers market closest to where I lived in Bronxville, when I started tossing out these ideas to one framer who I had become friendly with. My thoughts on how he could create different products poured forth like a river in flood.

Eventually I started to slow down, when I noticed he had a completely amazed look on his face. i asked him what was the matter and he asked me for my business card. He wanted to hire me as a consultant! So I threw out my shingle as a food and beverage business consultant and took the plunge to make it my professional, as well as personal life. I consulted to a variety of businesses from farms to restaurants to small food businesses. I helped them create new products and grow in size and strength.

The bug to create is a strong one. Once you have it, it tends to develop over time, growing stronger and taking up more and more of your time. I started playing around at home with brewing beer and mead again. Something that I had done during and after college, with a few stints working in brewpubs. Then I moved on to hard cider, wine, vinegar making, and more. After that I started playing around with spirits. I was infusing vodka and other liquors, making liqueurs, and then to mixology, the science of making cocktails. I read everything I could on cocktails and cocktail history. Did you know that according to a friend of mine, world renowned cocktail expert David Wondrich, the term cocktail was first used in print in 1803? Soon I was creating cocktails out of every spirit, mixer, and strange ingredient that came to mind. I sent emails to various spirit companies with my recipes, and every now and then got an email back praising or condemning my creations. The highest praise was when they asked to use my cocktail recipe on their website or in print. Eventually I was asked to be in cocktail competitions, like the 2007 Second Annual Clément Rhum NYC Cocktail Challenge- Part One that I wrote a four part series about last year on Slashfood. Here's Part Two, Part Three, and Part Four.

As I've said many times one of my favorite spirits is gin. Over time I developed several infused gins that I started taking to parties and passing around. Soon several people in the New York liquor industry started praising my efforts and urging me to make my gins professionally. I looked in to what it would take to be a distiller, but was soon persuaded away from the idea. I was told by many distillers that it was an endeavor that could takes years and hundreds of thousands of dollars to make a reality.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) enforces federal laws and regulations relating to alcohol and tobacco diversion, firearms, explosives, and arson. I gave them a call and in no uncertain terms they persuaded me from my endeavor. They had just split along functional lines with tax collection operations under the Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB- remember this term since you may hear a lot of it over the next few chapters) while the law enforcement duties shifted to Department of Justice under the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (still known as the ATF).

The whole procedure left the departments in a bit of a mess and very difficult to work with. The word unfriendly was not what I would use to describe how they reacted to my requests about opening an artisanal distillery. Belligerant was more like it, and I decided to put distilling out of my mind for a few years.

So I just experimented at home with my food and beverage creations; while I helped others to build their business dreams instead.
Note: Thankfully, now that the TTB has had a few years to straighten out their departments roles, the TTB is now actually friendly and helpful, if not always exactly speedy in their handling of requests and applications. At least they try, and mean well. They are even having a TTB Expo in mid-June 2008; so that distilleries, breweries, wineries employees can take seminars on legal, tax, labeling, and other regulated aspects of the industry.