Welcome to Diary of a Distiller. I am in the process of moving the content over from the old site. The biggest problem with moving the old content over is the photos. So the text will be here, but photos will have to slowly follow. Until then you can read the old content in the Archives.
You can also read my thoughts on my Journey on Enjoying Libations at: 
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Diary of a Distiller: Chapter 17 - Noshing on the Big Apple
By JMF on Sep 12, 2008 | In Main | Send feedback »
The past week has been more focused on my career as a Food / Spirits writer, than on the distillery. I am in NY City covering several events which I will post about in the next week or so. One is a bacon tasting, hosted by my friend Josh Ozersky, of Grub Street. Another is a tour of a underground Chinese food malls in Flushing Queens. I found out about these food malls, which remind me of ones I ate at in my travels in China a few years ago. The NY Times and other sources have covered them a bit in the past few months, but I'll talk about two of my favorite stands. One has a fantastic "Lamb Burger" and "Cold Skin" which isn't. The other has a fabulous lamb soup with hand pulled noodles six feet long.
Also this week I had to connect with my friends in the cocktail business. I have been to tiki bars, rooftop bars, bars with hidden entrances, bars in train stations, ones with unpublished addresses, floating spirits events, etc. I'll tell you more about some of these later as well.
So everyone have a great weekend. I'll be driving five hundred miles back home to represent Winterport Winery at the Mid-Coast Food and Wine Festival in Maine.
Diary of a Distiller: Chapter 16 - A whole world of Pear
By JMF on Sep 5, 2008 | In Main | Send feedback »
As it has been for the past few weeks, and will continue for the next few months, this is wine making time. We are making every kind of wine you can imagine, and bottling as much as possible as well, to empty out fermenting tanks so we can start new batches. Our total wine capacity in tanks is around 7,000 gallons between fermenting and storage, and we are at around half that right now. The amount in tanks changes weekly as we start new batches or bottle mature ones. The beginning of the week was spent on labeling bottles we filled last week, but didn't have labels for. They arrived just a day or two after we needed them, so we were able to finish off that batch of cranberry wine and it's now ready for the holidays.
Then we bottled up the last of the strawberry wine, which should last us to next strawberry season. We started up some pear wine and apple wine and will be making quite a bit of both of these, especially the apple wine. Some of that will be ear-marked for when we get the distillery up and running, so we can make a Calvados style aged apple brandy.
Diary of a Distiller: Chapter 15 - Glasssss and Raspberry Rain
By JMF on Aug 29, 2008 | In Main | Send feedback »
I had a nice time last weekend wandering the woods. I spent Sunday with the Maine Mycological Association on a foray for wild mushrooms, then some hikes looking for wild teas and edibles on Monday.
Tuesday it was back to work. I have been researching many products I want to develop and have been seeking out old texts on distilling, wine making, etc. I spent my mornings brainstorming and working on possible recipes. I won't say what they are quite yet, but when I get them into production in a few months, I'll tell you more.
Tuesday afternoon we got in a nice large shipment of glass. Bottles that is. There is a bit of a global glass shortage and we have had certain wine bottles on back order for months and months; especially needed are the 375 ml. frosted bottles for one of our dessert wines, raspberry Rain. We haven't been able to meet the demand and actually took it off our current list for almost five months since we didn't have any bottles. We do have a full tank of the wine aging in the cellar, so bottling is the focus for the week.
A huge 53 foot semi made the delivery. It's amazing how good truck drivers are. Watching how he backed up to our loading dock, when the parking lot is less wide than the truck, was quite entertaining. then we had to get the six pallet loads of glass off of the truck and onto our loading dock, which is also the brewery and distillery.
Diary of a Distiller: Chapter 14 - Blueberry Wine
By JMF on Aug 22, 2008 | In Main | Send feedback »
Wow, it's already August 22nd and the summer is almost over. The past three days have been the best weather we have seen since early July. Until this recent weather change we had only two sunny days out of the prior 41. Now it's nice and sunny, and will be for a week at least, but already there is an Autumn nip to the air. High 70's with blue skies and puffy clouds during the days, it was actually cool enough last night that I had to close the windows and turn on the heat.
