Download 2 February 2002 Issue

When Peter Paisley started his microbrewery four years ago, he had no idea that one day he’d be making something other than beer. Paisley’s brewpub, Local Color, opened on January 1, 1998. Located in Novi, Michigan, 45 miles Northwest of Detroit and near Michigan State University, the establishment has done a brisk business from the start. With a capacity of 30,000 barrels, his operation grew 52 percent in 1999 to about 3,300 barrels. In 2000, Paisley figures he brewed approximately 5,000 barrels of beer.

Paisley uses a fully automated 25-barrel, 3-vessel Beraplan brewhouse to make mainly lagers, although the brewery does produce a few ales as well. Its Smooth Talker Pilsner has won a gold medal at the GABF. Other Local Color beers include Cloudy Red Lager, an amber/Vienna style beer, and Corporate Jim Pale Ale.

A fugitive from the automatic dish detergent industry, Paisley once made “Cascade” and other brands for Proctor & Gamble. From his manufacturing background, he found many craft beers to be of inconsistent quality. “Most micros didn’t see the consistency issue at first,” he says. “For a lot of them, every keg was different. But I knew that the drinking public wants consistency. ”

All was going well until Paisley decided to add liquor sales to his pub operation. “I wanted to draw more men to the pub,” he says, “people who don’t want just beer.”

But Michigan’s laws did not allow him to have a Class C restaurant license to sell liquor. He tried to change the law, but ran into difficulties with beer and wine wholesalers. “They saw me as a threat, since I would be serving all tiers of the system—it was ‘the camels’ nose under the tent”, he says.

Then it occurred to Paisley that he might have to provide his own spirits to customers. “I’m don’t really run a restaurant anyway,” he remembers thinking. “Why can’t I make my own liquor?”

Paisley read everything he could about making whiskey, and attended Alltech’s alcohol distilling and production school in Kentucky. “I found out that I could do it, but I wasn’t sure I could do it legally.”

Just as brewpubs were a novelty in the 1980’s, distilling pubs were unheard of in the late 90’s in Michigan. Paisley did his research and found out that he could get a distiller’s license. He contacted both his local government and the ATF, who told him “we better have a meeting.”

“It was an insane process,” Paisley recalls, but he finally got his license. “The local ATF office was great.” It turned out the key was having a “separate” facility to distill. Since his brew- ery was already separated from customers by a glass wall, it qualified. By setting up his still and aging room on premise, Paisley was able to start making his own liquor—gin, vodka, and whiskey even.

Paisley uses a 350 liter Jacob Karl modified columnar still for his alcohol production, which is currently only a few hundred barrels per year. State laws require him to bottle all spirits produced, and get label approval as well. According to Paisley, this “forced packaging” has made possible for him to sell his liquor off-premise as well. “We’ve had an unbelievable response. We just can’t make enough of some of our products, like our Michigan blueberry vodka.”

As the state’s only small distillery, Paisley gets many calls from other brewers interested in distilling, he says. He’s cur- rently writing a book on the subject, which he plans to release sometime later this year. “I’m willing to share information with anyone”, he says.

McMenamins’ Alcohol Empire

You’ve got to hand it to Oregon’s Mike and Brian McMenamin When these “brews brothers” wanted to do something—from building brewpubs to restoring and re-opening old hotels and dance halls—they’ve done it themselves. So it came as no sur- prise with those familiar with the McMenamins’entrepreneur- ial ways when they opened Oregon’s first distillery bar in December of 1998.

The bar is in a building almost hidden on the sprawling ground s of Edgefield Manor , which is the brothers’ show case brewery / hotel / restaurant / winery / golf course located in Troutdale, about 20 miles east of Portland. Currently offering two gins and an eau-de-vie made from wine grapes, the facility also is being used to make at least two different whiskies and grape brandy. Distiller Lee Medoff worked ten years as a brewer before taking on the challenge of distilling at McMenamins. “For me it was the next logical step,” he says. “It’s great to be in the leading wave of micro-distilling.” McMenamins uses an Arnold Holstein eau-de-vie still with a 65 gallon capacity. According to Lee, the first distillation normally takes about four hours. All spirits are put through a second distillation of 1-1/2 hours, when the various cuts are made. The tails of the second distillation are re-distilled, but never the heads, which are discarded.

For his whiskey, Medoff makes a beer of about 6% alcohol (“like our Hammerhead without hops”) and ferments it warm (over 70 ̊F) for three to five days. “I try to get it as dry as I can,” he says. A 20-barrel batch of the initial beer takes about five days to distill, with two separate runs a day for a total of 10 distillations. This nets about 100 gallons of spirit.

Medoff has two different types of barrel, 53 gallon American oak for whiskey and 60 gallon French oak barrels for brandy. Most are used cooperage, but there are a few new barrels as well. The spirits are cut with water before they are put in barrels at around 100 proof (about 140 proof for the brandy). So far the distillery has about 25 bar- rels of whiskey in the works, and about half that many for brandy, with the oldest dating from 1998. Lee filled nine whiskey barrels in 1999, and 12-14 more were added last year. Medoff expects to release McMenamin’s first whiskey on St. Patrick’s Day, 2002.

Since the company also makes its own wine as well as beer, the McMenamins decided to make brandy, too . Medoff is working on two different brandies from blends of different Northwest grape varieties—Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, and Sémillion and Sauvignon Blanc. The brandy spirits are being aged in a separate part of the cellar in French oak bar- rels from the Cognac region. According to Medoff, McMenamins’ has purchased (but not yet installed) an alambic pot still that will be used to make brandy in the future.

Whiskey and brandy take considerable time to produce, of course, and the distillery has a lineup of other “faster” spirits that it currently sells at its attached bar. These include a very fragrant and clean (triple distilled) poire eau-de-vie made from Oregon Hood River pears, a marionberry-flavored grappa, a very fruity and potent un-aged Syrah brandy, and an interesting gin made with a wine base (a malt-based version is also in the works). All (as well as Scotch, bourbon, and other non- McMenamins spirits) are available at the Distillery Pub, which is open from 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. year round.

To be able to sell its spirits on premise, McMenamins obtained its own distributor’s license from the Oregon Liquor Control Commission. All of its products are bottled and stored at a special OLCC warehouse within the building (they cannot be taken directly from distillery to bar.) “There’s a lot of paper- work, but the state has been easy to work with,” Medoff says.

Bardenay Restaurant & Distillery

Bardenay Restaurant & Distillery, in Boise, Idaho, was begun by cider maker Kevin Settles, who formerly made Seven Sisters Cider (after 1996, the company was sold and renamed Seven Sisters Wild Horse Cider, which is no longer in business). Working with partner Dave Krick, who operates the Bittercreek Ale House, Settles began negotiating with the ATF and the State of Idaho for permission to make vodka, gin, and rum on premise. “We decided to do this in a very public manner”, he says. By March of 2000, permits were secured. “We became the first establishment in the country to operate a distillery in a public [retail] place,” Settles claims.

Marketing its products has been a convoluted process for Bardenay, however. Because all sprits must be sold or dispensed from bottles, the company had to get label approval from the ATF before it could bottle its products. Bardenay’s spirits had to be shipped to a state liquor warehouse, then sold back to the restaurant through a wholesaler. There is a significant loss of revenue for the company by this system, Settles admits, but profits are recovered by the low pour cost of having one’s own alcohol.

Using a Holstein pot still in a small (260 square foot) space, Settles acknowledges his production limitations. “The biggest mistake you can make in this business is overestimating the volume you can produce”, he believes. So far most of Bardenay’s production is sold at the pub in mixed drinks. Currently, five liquor stores in the Boise area also carry Bardenay products.

The raw material for Bardenay’s spirits is not beer or wine, but cane sugar. “It makes very pure alcohol,” Settles says. For the distillery’s gin, which begins at about 95% ethanol, 12 different botanicals are added. “We think our gin will stand up against anyone’s,” Settles claims. Settles has no plans to make whiskey at this point, since the distillery has no space for aging. “Right now we want to be the finest cocktail bar that we can be,” he says. Bardenay’s 12-page drinks menu includes many top single-malt Scotches as well as small batch Bourbons, high quality Tequilas, a wide selection of Northwest and California wines, and 13 beers on tap.

R&D at Lagunitas

Meanwhile, at Lagunitas Brewery in Petaluma, California, owner Tony Magee has also made the move to micro-distilling. His still is a homemade affair, fabricated from a 100-gallon Grundy tank with a lyne arm added.

The company intends to produce whiskey, using a yeast from Tennessee to produce the original beer. So far only one pilot batch has been distilled, just 15 gallons at about 95% ABV. Lagunitas currently has a permit from the State of California to produce 220 cases (about 500 gallons) of spirits per year.

“We’re still in the R and D stage here,” Magee says. “We want it now, but this is going to be a long process.”

New Players at an Old Craft

Compared to brewing, distilling is a long process indeed.

The rewards, particularly those involving whisky or brandy, are usually achieved in years rather than a few weeks or months. There are different techniques involved and different skills to be learned in the craft of distilling. But indications are that more American artisanal breweries are now making a commitment to a new craft—one that should pay off handsomely in the future.

Alan Moen is the editor of American Distiller. He lives in Entiat, Wash., and can be reached at alanmoen@televar.com.