A few days ago I posted a “Position Wanted” on the artisanal distillers online discussion forum, of which I am one of the two administrators. Amazingly, by the end of the business day I had been contacted by seven distilleries or distilleries in planning. I ended up being hired by two as a consultant to help them get up and running, and was offered a job as master distiller for a rum distillery on a Carribean island. I turned down the distiller position, it wasn’t the right distillery for me to work at and I don’t think I want to work for someone else. I’d rather have my own place. the following day I was contacted by a brand new, local distillery  about 20 minutes away. I went for a visit, and after an hour of talking we decided to collaborate on some distilling projects together. The first of which will be making my late 19th century style, barrel aged peach brandy. I’ll have to go back up to Maine to get my distillery equipment and the 12,000 lbs. of peach puree and bring them down to NY. Hopefully this will be in the next week or so. If the project gets up and running I’ll post about it, including photos.

I am rebuilding this site, chapters and photos will be posted as fast as I can get it up and running. Chapters One through Thirty of Diary of a Distiller were originally published at AOL.com / Slashfood.com on the dates indicated.

Hi Folks, here it is over a year later and there have been many changes. Penobscot Bay Distillery is no more. After a year of my supposed partners playing head games, stalling on construction, and other assorted idiocy, I pulled out of the project. They managed to draw out construction for so long that I ran shorter on funds than I had planned. There wasn’t much work that had to be done, but it was one excuse after another. A total of 6 weeks construction wasn’t finished after 21 months. I’m not sure why they did this. It makes no sense to me. After all the hard work I did to help improve and market the winery, after helping build the brewery and establishing a brand, they let me down when it came to the distillery. Shysters? Crooks? Scared and intimidated by my talent and success? Who knows?  I’ll let their conscience, or lack thereof, deal with it.

I moved back to the New York City suburbs a few months ago and I am in discussion with several groups about starting up a distillery again. It will be located somewhere in NY State. Whether in the NYC Metro area, or an hour or so upstate i haven’t decided yet. So currently my distilling equipment is in storage, but my plans are to move on with the project. Eventually.

Over the weekend we had a very busy time at the Winery. Saturday night was the culmination of a month of work by several dozen people from the area who entered in our Gingerbread House competition for charity. We have had several classes a week on how to make and decorate gingerbread houses and ended up with almost thirty contestants. There were five categories: Professional, Under 17, Traditional, Historical, and Fantasy. There were some absolutely wonderful creations, and I was surprised at the quality of all the entries, especially the fact that some of the best were by people who had never done this before.

Sunday night I went to a Sunday Night Cocktail event hosted by my friend and award winning mixologist, Lydia Reismueller, formerly of the speakeasy style cocktail bar PDT and restaurant/cocktail bar Elettaria in NYC. Lydia has been having these Sunday events for the past two months at the Westcot Forge restaurant in Blue Hill, ME and they have been a big success. I tried a few of her new creations and said my good-bye’s for the season, as she heads off to travel the world until March with her chef boyfriend. I’m already looking forward to when she starts up the Cocktail Sundays again next Spring when she comes back to manage one of the excellent, local, organic farms.

My supposed days off, Sunday and Monday, were filled with working on distilling and brewing research, writing, and consulting. Having three or four careers at the same time is getting exhausting. Tuesday we were back at the brewery, putting in some of the final touches. We still have a few more things to wrap up, but are now able to brew beer. Wednesday I got a delivery of another two tons of peach puree to make into brandy when we put the distillery online. Later in the day we did a wet run on the system, boiling water and testing how well everything works. So we’re going to brew our Old Factory Whistle Red Scottish Ale…and now it’s time for me to move on to brewing and distilling full time.

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.
Photo gallery at end of post