JMForester
Well, it’s been well over a year since I updated this blog. Since then Dutch’s Spirits, and our new distillery, have been separated into two separate businesses until the construction on the distillery is completed. We have been making some products at friends distilleries, getting them in the barrel to age, and to start releasing this fall.
But the first product that we are releasing is our new Dutch’s Colonial Cocktail Bitters, the first in a line of bitters representing era’s of American History. For more details, and to purchase retail or wholesale, please visit our site at Dutch’s Spirits.
Well, the conference was exhausting. Everyone was showing off their whiskey and moonshine and you couldn’t walk 20 feet without someone handing you a glass of bottle. I don’t want to even touch and booze for a few weeks. As I thought, my partner was overloaded with information on distilling. He is working frantically to integrate everything he learned into our business plan. Every few hours we would get together and tqalk and exchange notes about little details that we had missed, but picked up from conversations. The most important thing we came away with was information on construction.
I was also asked to be one of the judges of the spirits competition, instead of helping to coordinate it. The panel of us ten judges had to work our way through 65+ spirits in over a dozen categories. You might think this is fun, but it is very difficult work. The judging is completely blind, and all you know is the category that the spirit was submitted to. We can’t really talk much to each other, but every now and then you heard someone muttering to themselves. As the day progressed I found that I was getting more and more sensitive to some of the chemicals that are present in whiskey. they are in such tiny amounts that most people don’t notice that they are there, but it got to the point that they were becoming overwhelming to me. I’ve judged spirits before, but not whiskey, just gin and rum; as well as cocktails a few times. This became actually painful by the end of the day. Surprisingly, we found that the unaged “white” whiskey was better in most cases than the brown aged whiskey. If you want to see a list of the medalists, follow this link to my other blog, DrinkingtheWorld.com.
As I mentioned before, I consult and write for the American Distilling Institute (ADI) which is the artisanal distillers trade organization. The annual conference is in a few days, and I will be helping to coordinate part of it, specifically helping to run the spirits judging. the focus of the conference this year is Whiskey and Moonshine. The conference will be held in Louisville, KY and at a Huber Distillery in Indiana. I’m looking forward to a few days talking with all my distiller friends from around the country, and making new friends as well. Since I am one of the two administrators for the ADI online artisanal distillers discussion forum I know many of the over 210 distilleries around the US, but there are quite a few folks who I will be meeting in person for the first time.
One of my partners will be joining me at the conference. I think he is in for a surprise and he will be overloaded with information. This is my third conference and I still remember the daze I was in after each one. I’ll catch up here after the conference.
Another month has gone by and a lot is happening. My partners and I have formed the business corporation, applied for trademarks, gone over the land several times, and are head deep in developing our business plan. We’ve also been in discussions with attorneys, architects, engineers, and have visited several other distilleries in the area. We hope to form a southern NY state distillers co-op and work on some projects together. A year or two ago a group of NY distillers got together and discussed forming the NY Craft Distillers Guild. It didn’t really take off fully, but it will eventually. The distilleries in the northern wine country part of NY state have a different focus than do the downstate distilleries. Most of them are making brandy, while the downstaters are more into whiskey and vodka. So, while we are all distilleries, our agendas are different.
Up on the farm in Dutchess County where our distillery will be located, 50 acres of corn is about to be sowed. This will be the base for our bourbon if we are up and running next winter. Many people think that bourbon can only be made in Kentucky, but that is untrue. US Federal law defines styles of spirits, and bourbon can be made anywhere. The regulations state that “Bourbon whisky” is whisky produced at not exceeding 160° proof from a fermented mash of not less than 51 percent corn, and stored at not more than 125° proof in charred new oak containers. But they do not state that it has to be made in a specific are. We won’t be able to sow any rye, wheat, or barley this year, but I will source NY state grown grains as needed.
Well, I never did collaborate with the distillery I mentioned in the last post. We had some major differences in style and substance.
On another note, I was contacted a month ago by two guys who want to start a distillery. Their goals and mine mesh together very well. We have had several meetings, and are now fine tuning the business plan. We have decided on the location, and are negotiating the lease. It will be in Dutchess County, NY, and part of a 370 acre farm. We plan to work with local farmers to grow our own grain, and use the spent grain to feed heritage breeds of livestock such as Berkshire hogs. We will eventually have our own malting house, brewpub, B&B, and several other associated businesses. All of which we will be partners in with folks from the local community, with them owning and running the businesses.
There are some really cool aspects to this new distillery and I can’t wait to share them with you as it unfolds. Eventually, when we are up and running, I’ll take photos of the grounds and tell you about the story of the history of this farm. Also I will post on a regular basis as I meet with architects and engineers to plan the buildings, and during construction.
A few days ago I rented a truck and went up to my storage space in Maine to pick up my distilling equipment. It was a multi-day process, but I got the still and other equipment down to NY. It’s temporarily stored in a friends barn in the Catskills while I decide where to go from here.
I have been meeting with quite a few groups who want to open distilleries. Some of these folks have done their research and know what they are getting into. Others haven’t and I give them long lists of books to buy, websites to visit, etc. I don’t expect many of these people to get back in touch after they do their homework. Opening a distillery is a multi-year project.
I’m still looking for a distillery I can collaborate with to make my peach brandy as soon as I find the right place. A friend is looking at his schedule for late spring/summer, and if he can fit me in, I may be able to use his distillery on the weekends.
I’m starting off my day with a business meeting of the Maine Winery Guild. Last year I kick-started the association into forming and this will be our third business meeting. Owners of most of Maine’s 18+ wineries will be there. I also invited the owners of the State’s micro-distilleries to attend, so we can decide whether to join the Maine Winery guild, or start a separate association. I know that after-wards a few of us will be celebrating Repeal Day by tasting each others products.
After that I’ll be going back to the winery to bottle Cranberry Wine. The job just got much easier. When we bought the brewery equipment a large filter was part of the deal. We never got around to cleaning it up and using it until this week. It’s four times the size of the one we were using before. With that much more surface area the pump works much faster and easier. So running a 500 gallon tank of wine through the filter takes only forty minutes, compared with 1/2 a day or more with the old filter. Wine needs to be filtered sevral times through finer and finer levels until it is crystal clear. So what took three days before, we can now due in one day before lunchtime. Mike was practically dancing with glee.
I’m in NYC visiting family all week and going around meeting up with all my mixologist friends. It will take me all week to catch up on what’s going on the the cocktail world. I missed all the fall cocktails and hope to try a few before the winter ones come onto all the menus. With luck I may still be able to sample the fall creations.
I have a few bottles of wine from the winery for family, and a few bottles of our new hard cider for friends and the bar crew at a few of my favorite cocktail bars. I’m looking forward to seeing everyone’s reactions. I’ve also been planning a reunion with friends from back as far as elementary school and the neighborhood where I grew up, as well as friends from college and my early 20’s. It should be an evening of carousing and good, loud, fun; as we catch up on the latest. One friend of mine who I have known since 5th grade is a Lt. Colonel in the Army Reserve and has been called back to active duty for his third tour of duty. So we are going to give him a wet and wild send off as well. I hope everyone had a fantastic Thanksgiving, and have a fun weekend!
Later Monday we got our first shipment of brewing ingredients: crushed malt, hops, yeast, and assorted adjuncts and fermentation nutrients. So as soon as we clear up the last little things we will be brewing beer!
Much of the rest of the week was spent in the winery, bottling wine, re-arranging storage, and all kinds of things to get ready for our busiest time of year, the Holiday Season. Later in the week we found out that we still had some major problems with the boiler. Actually, not the boiler, but the configuration of the piping, where and how parts are located, steam condensate traps, pumps, etc. An expert came in and very soon was able to figure out the problems and we ordered some more parts and started what we hope will be our final re-design. Just another week or so and we’ll be able to brew.
On Wednesday, just before lunch time, the delivery of 6,000 pounds of peach puree arrived. Twelve drums, each weighing 500 pounds, stacked four to a pallet. As the first pallet load was being lowered on the gate lift to the ground, it started teetering, and almost fell. But made it semi-safely to the ground. The second load got out of control and came crashing down onto the asphalt of the parking lot. As you can see they were torn open, dented and partially crushed like soda cans. Luckily, the puree is packed aseptically inside very thick Mylar bags that have a breaking strength in the thousands of pounds. So with a huge struggle we were able to right the drums and manhandle them down into the winery. It took us almost two hours to get the twelve drums down the ramp and into the basement. Leaving us sore and aching in every joint.
Then on Thursday the boiler guys came to correct some other minor problems, and we powered up the boiler. Everything seemed fine, except for the cloud of smoke wafting along the ceiling. As the steam pipes heated up for the first time any oils accumulated on their surface burned off. So we walked around in a haze, and daze, choking on oily smoke. We set up some exhaust fans to vent the winery, and turned on the big exhaust blower in the distillery, which helped a lot. Then we started to have some more problems with the boiler shutting down due to pressure problems, so we spent the day re-thinking the installation. Friday and Saturday were spent adding new sections of pipe for the condensate return to the boiler. Hopefully this will be the last hurdle in the boiler drama, and then we can make beer. I REALLY need a tasty brew right now!
We had a few more small things to fix in the brewery. Basically, like I’ve mentioned before, everything that could be broken, or ruined through neglect, was. Sometimes it’s difficult to order parts, they may not have been made for 20 years since the equipment was new. We had to get in touch with France and England to find new valve bodies since the rubber was fried in all the ones for the brew kettle, lauter tun, and fermenting tanks. Hopefully we can get them in the next few days and fix the valves. Otherwise they need to be replaces, at a grand or two for six of them.
We did quite a bit of work on our wine. After making wine all summer it’s time to bottle most of it, so we’re getting some of it ready to bottle and bottling the rest. The new batch of dry blueberry is very nice. Dry, full bodied, spicy like a shiraz, and just a hint of oak.
I have been talking to different guys about building the stripping still, but most of them don’t have the skill or knowledge and I’m having to teach them what they will have to do. Finally I found a guy who seems to be the right one for the job. He had a background in distilling, as well as building distillery equipment, just the combination I need. We have chatted a few times on the phone, now I have to meet him and go over my plans and hear his thoughts.
The boiler guys, who have been missing in action for over two weeks finally showed up yesterday to finish the job. Of course they didn’t have all the parts they needed with them and had to go out several times to find them. Then they power up the boiler fr a test and steam starts leaking from the pipework. of course it wasn’t the majority of the pipe work that we did. It was the 5% that they did. Of course it will take us a whole day to fix their shoddy work. then the boiler kept shutting down. Our error in design or their error in work? Either way, it’s a comedy of errors… and that’s being nice when I want to be insulting. So I just bite my tongue and walk away.
I decided to do some photography of bottles of the very rare, and out of production, Tanqueray Malacca Gin in my collection; to send to a potential customer who also collects rare spirits. As I was putting things away and moving cases around, I stumbled back in forth in a daze. Then due to my clumsiness a case of empty wine bottles fell from the top of a pallet onto my big toe. Usually I have pretty fast reactions and can catch falling stuff, or at least slow down or break their fall. This time I didn’t even notice it until a few seconds after it landed, directly with the pointy corner of the case in the middle of my toe. It didn’t hurt at first. Mike was near me hunting for some tools and I pointed out the case balancing on it’s corner, sitting on my toe. He just shook his head and shrugged with a rueful smile. I knew it should hurt, but my reflexes were so slowed down that I felt nothing.
I picked up the case and heaved it over my head and back onto the pallet. Grumbling under my breath that this was going to hurt like hell. I started to make my way up the stairs to my office and as I did so my toe started to get warm, then hot, then to burn unmercifully. By the time I hobbled up the stairs and sat down at my desk in the distillery my toe really, really hurt!
You can see some photos of this in the galleries to come. Also I show a few of our 500 gallon wine fermenting and storage tanks. The reason I’m show them is to focus on the PVC piping along the ceiling above the tanks. This is for venting CO2 from the tanks, to the outside. Each tank that has active fermentation still in progress has tubing that comes out of an airlock and goes into the CO2 vent pipe. This way the basement winery doesn’t become filled with CO2, killing us. That just wouldn’t be fun.
Early Monday morning the boiler guys came to start the boiler installation. We are usually closed Sundays and Mondays, but Mike went in to work with them; while I was off down to Rockport, near where I used to live in Rockland / Owls Head, to meet with a Steel Work company to discuss my latest project. The boiler guys spent several days working on the installation, and will come back next week to finish it.
We started with several different batches of sweet apple cider, fresh pressed from locally grown apples. Each batch had a different blend of apples and was fermented at cool temperatures using different yeasts. After the primary fermentation, the cider was taken off the lees (old, spent, dead and dormant yeast that settles to the bottom of the fermenting tank.) Then put into new tanks to age slowly for months and months, all at cool temperatures in our wine cellar. The cool temperature and slow, slow, slow, fermentation ensure that there will be lots of fresh apple flavor in the finished cider; as well as the tones and notes from the fermentation. Since each batch was made from different apples, and different yeasts; they had a completely different character from each other.
One of the craft secrets to creating a great hard cider is long and slow aging; and this we had done. The other is blending the cider. If you just make one, huge, batch of hard cider using all your apples, it tends to taste flat and one dimensional after fermentation. But if you make several smaller batches, with different apples in each, and later blend them carefully together; you get a final cider that is greater than the sum of its parts. Really great ciders save back some of the final blend to age even longer, and this is added to the blend the following year/s to bring in even greater complexity.
We here at Winterport Winery / Penobscot Bay Distillery & Brewery live by the New England and Maine way of thrift. As Francis H. Sisson said almost a hundred years ago, “Thrift was never more necessary in the world’s history than it is today.” But there are many sides to thrift. As Orison Swett Marden said, “Thrift means that you should always have the best you can possibly afford, when the thing has any reference to your physical and mental health, to your growth in efficiency and power.” This holds true in business, as in personal matters. So, while we use and re-use what we can, we also make sure to use the best quality available as well. So in matters of construction, if it is good, solid, and recyclable, it’s back in the game. If not, then chuck it out; and replace with the best available.
Just as a side note: the type of pipe we are working with is called “Black Pipe”, the type of steel pipe used for natural gas, hot water and steam circulation in boilers, and it is made of heavy steel. It’s thick, strong, but not as hard as stainless steel; and so more malleable. It expands and contracts better and is able to handle shifting; that would crack the harder, but more brittle stainless steel. You need heavy equipment to cut and tread the pipe ends. So we rented a pipe cutter/threader to do the job. This pipe is connected with even more malleable cast iron fittings. All of which are very solid and long lasting, but weigh a TON.
The second time I had a tree branch break on me was when I was nineteen and I messed up my right knee real bad for the first time and was on crutches for awhile. (Note: Do not have keg parties in trees without safety harnesses. I learned the hard way.) As soon as I was healed I fell off the roof of a house during a thunderstorm. It had been real fun running along the long, low, slanted roof in the pouring rain and sliding down it; and then to bring yourself to a stop before you got to the edge. One time I tried to do a stunt from a cowboy movie and grab the gutter as I slid off, and do a drop kick onto a friend. Oops! There went my other knee. That was a great summer! As I got older I started working for Outward Bound and was always up in trees on challenge/ropes courses and got so comfortable I could make it through these airborne obstacle courses 30-60 feet in the air, blindfolded.
Every now and then over the years I would put in a stint in contracting and construction, thereby ending up on ladders and rooftops. Well, unsecured ladders started to scare the hell out of me real quick. I had a best friends father fall and break his neck when a ladder slipped. A fellow worker had a ladder slip and he broke both his wrists. I started getting really conservative when it came to ladder safety. Even when setting up access to a ropes course I always made sure the ladder was secured at the top so it couldn’t slip. Even after all my years going up and down ladders I am still fearful. But I also stubborn and refuse to be intimidated or controlled by anything other than myself.
As you may have noticed as I write my journal, things are speeding up here at our facility. I am starting to feel like an expectant papa once again. The feeling is almost indescribable; exciting and scary, filled with impatience and frustration, and every now and then a sense of wonder. We are now finishing the construction that had been put on hold way too many times, until we got certain parts and pieces of equipment. When we first got the brewery equipment we knew it was a good deal. What we didn’t realize at first was how badly the equipment had been misused. It came to us third-hand. The first owners knew what they were doing, but the second owners were clueless. Everything that could be broken, was. Fixing it all has cost almost as much as the original price. You wouldn’t believe how many hours have been spent on it as well. We have been building, rebuilding, cleaning, polishing, taking things apart, repairing them, and putting them back together. Manuals were ordered, read, studied, and memorized. I see the disaster of equipment in all stages of use and misuse, then partly dismantled and in a state of repair; littering what was once the beautiful and clean home of my future brewery/distillery. Finally it is all slowly coming together.
Do you remember the 70’s TV Show “The Six Million Dollar Man”? At the start of each episode they say “Steve Austin, astronaut. A man barely alive. Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to build the world’s first bionic man. Steve Austin will be that man. Better than he was before. Better, stronger, faster.” Well that’s what’s going on here. I feel like we are team of surgeons, or maybe mad scientists… re-building a living being from the horribly injured wreck of what once was great. Sometimes the surgery is detailed. Piecing together tiny wires, resistors, connections. Other times you reach for the biggest hammer or wrench you can find. We are discarding old and outdated parts of the brewery and replace them with the best, cutting edge, adding new technology. Computers, sensors, probes, you name it. We will rebuild it. Better than it was before. Better, Stronger, Faster. It will be The Bionic Brewery! (And hopefully not cost six million dollars!)
After the jump are photos of the first part of installing the steel vent pipe. It was heavy as hell, and I had to lift it into place by hand as the brew kettle was jockeyed into position, that had to be exact to within a 1/2 inch so it could connect to the pre-cut and fitted pipes that attach to other pieces of equipment.
In the afternoon we drove from Blue Hill down to Rockport for the the First Annual Mid-Coast Food and Wine Festival which was coordinated by my friend Bettina of Cellardoor Winery and Cathe of the State of Maine Cheese Company. It was like a reunion in that I saw so many friends who I only get to see on rare occasions, now that I moved up north 55 miles to the border between Mid-Coast and Down-East Maine. There were several wineries represented; my friend Keith’s Sweetgrass Farm Winery & Distillery, my friends Buddy and Holly of Savage Oakes Winery, and of course we at Winterport Winery had a table at the tasting. Mike and Joan’s daughter and her husband were there representing our winery, as I played hooky for the day. Another friend, Brian, who just started up Oyster River Winegrowers was supposed to be there, but couldn’t make it for some reason. That’s too bad because I haven’t yet tried his white wine that came out this summer.
At the food stalls I ran into several more friends. Ann Marie of Ann Marie’s Kitchen was there serving great pork cooked medium rare and juicy after being marinated in her Secret Sauce. Ann Marie is a firecracker and I like her and her fiance a lot. They don’t live to far from me and I have to get together with them soon to kick back and hang out, although hanging out with Ann Marie is usually anything but quiet, more like being in the presence of a human dynamo that’s putting out 10,000 volts.
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.
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.
Well, the brewery/distillery had another slowdown. By this time I am amazed I have any hair left, let alone a full head. I have been pulling at it non-stop for months now. Well, it seems to be straighter than before, and lighter in color as well. Interestingly, my mustache and sideburns have started to go white in patches. I guess my hair is as stressed as I am. The latest is that the boiler quotes were way too high again from the last dealer we spoke to, and so we are getting in more quotes. These guys can’t seem to understand that we don’t want or need some multi-million btu steam boiler, but something on the smaller side.
photo gallery at end of post