Diary of a Distiller

I'm going to keep it brief this week. It's been hectic up here in Maine for me, and I am heading out for the weekend for a much needed vacation. Maine's nickname is "The Vacationland," so how come I feel like I need to get away to get mine? I thought I had a vacation early this summer around the Fourth of July, but it wasn't as relaxing as I needed. I was so set on relaxing that I never did.

Then I was in New Orleans for eight days for Tales of the Cocktail, but that turned out to be hectic work as well. So I'm heading down to the Hampton's on Long Island in New York for the weekend. I'll be seeing some of my oldest friends who I have known since I was in my late teens. It's been a year or two since I last saw some of them and it should be fun.

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Well, most folks have a dry job, but mine is wet. Making, serving, and enjoying fine libations is a hard and trying occupation. If you are one of those dry types, it just isn't your calling. Me, I like it wet. I lived near a dry county once. I shudder to think about it. Yup, I like it wet. But in some things moderation is key. Until recently I wondered what those things were. Now I know. Sometimes it can be too wet. I guess it's time to finally break out the umbrellas.

It's been a dreary week here in Winterport, Maine. Actually a dreary summer is more like it. The weather has been the same as far back as mid-June. Hazy, rainy, humid, hot, wet, yuch. I'm normally like a duck and love wet weather, but some times it gets to be Just Too Much.

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Building our brewery and distillery is much like building a wall. first you have to lay the foundation. Then the first course of bricks, then corners, edging, etc. If you goof up in one area, it affects the whole thing. So you have to tear it down, correct the problem or make the change, and start all over again. As you can see above, we are taking apart every piece of equipment, one by one, and cleaning sterilizing them, replacing any wort out or broken parts, and putting them back together.That specific piece of equipment with the parts laid out on the floor is the diverter and chilling plate. It's the arteries and veins of the whole brewery. By placing the elbow joints in various configurations we can send water or wort (freshly brewed but unfermented beer) to any piece of equipment such as fermenters, filters etc. and heat or chill it.

Well, this has been an intense week. As I mentioned, a few weeks ago we got out federal brewery permit, but the state permit is the one that makes us official. On Tuesday the state inspector came, and even though we still have lots of work to do before we can start brewing, we now have our state and federal brewery permits and are an official micro-brewery. Hooray! Now we just have to locate the rest of the equipment we need and finish putting it all together. Then we can work on recipes for our beers.

Once the brewery is up and running it won't take much at all to finish off the distillery. Of course the simple, small distillery I imagined at the start of this whole journey, is nothing compared to what is in store. One small still is rapidly becoming two, then three...

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It's been a long week for me since I last wrote in my journal and Tales of the Cocktail beat me silly. I had a great time but got laryngitis and a cold, and my camera was acting up on me for a while, so I have only a few photos out of hundreds that I took. Finally, my travels home were a complete disaster. A half day trip turned into a multi-day epic. I was pulled off several planes because they broke down, had numerous ones rescheduled, sat on runways for hours, and didn't get anything to eat for 40 hours; just a few glasses of water. (The last is probably not a bad thing, in N'awlins overeating great food is easy.) There were a few times I wish I had Dorothy's ruby slippers because I wanted to be home sooo bad.

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