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Want to be an innovator? Craft brewing isn’t the place to do it anymore. The frontier has left us behind, the trails have almost all been blazed.
We old-timers remember the days when you could name all the microbreweries in America, even after four pints. But those days are over, and the frontier is crowded with marketers, salesfolk, and communications directors.
If you want to get out ahead of the crowd, there’s still time to catch the new wave: microdistilling. Fire up your pot still full of wort or cane syrup or eau de fruit-juice, and you can join a growing number of people who have that passion to create that galvanized the pioneers of the microbrewing movement. It’s not too late, but you’ll have to make some serious gut checks before you jump in.
Microdistilling shows some interesting parallels to microbrewing: tiny budgets, ‘innovative’ equipment, new approaches to old traditions. But two of the most interesting parallels are Fritz Maytag and Bill Owens. Maytag, of course, is widely considered to be the first American microbrewer, and Owens was close behind. And Maytag also went into microdistilling early with his Old Potrero whisky and Junipero gin, while Owens has taken on a more Johnny Appleseed kind of role with his American Distilling Institute (www.distilling.com).
"It’s a new thing, a new concept," said Owens. "There are about 60 in the U.S., half have opened in the last five years. These guys have the devotion of the people at the beginning of the microbrewing business."
It’s a good thing, because to hear Owens and some of the people already in the business, it’s going to be a tough row to hoe, much like the early microbrewers found it. "The barriers to entry are stiffer than with winemaking and brewing," Owens said. "Tougher licensing with the ATTTB, there’s a steeper knowledge curve, and it costs a lot more for marketing."
Dogfish Head’s Sam Calagione saw the barriers differently, but just as tough. "The biggest barrier is finding a knowledgeable distiller," he said. "We went through three before finding a star. State-level regulations are the other hurdle. I had to write the legislation and read it in the Delaware Senate. There were Senators saying "We’re going to have moonshine in Delaware, it’ll be the insurance is the third barrier. We had to build a room to NASA specs with no electric outlets and vacuum lights with no sparks. And the insurance company still freaked out."
Duncan Holaday had a simpler but no less harrowing story. After living in a tent in Vermont with his family while he built his Duncan’s Spirits distillery, developing a process to create his Vermont Spirit vodka out of maple syrup, and testing and trialing till he got the first batch done, just as he finished packing the first case, his cat knocked over the burner under the still, and the whole distillery burned to the ground. Passion won out: he rebuilt and is turning out spirit.
Some folks have been at it longer than that. Charles Miller started up his Belmont Farms distillery in Culpeper, VA 15 years ago, making Virginia Lightning corn whiskey. "I decided there were so many bourbons on the shelf, why go head to head?" he said. "So I tried something new." He’s trying something else new now, his Copper Fox Virginia whiskey, a whiskey aged by putting tiny pieces of charred wood in a bag that is soaked in the whiskey like a teabag. "I put it in there for about 60 days," he said. "I’m getting good results from applewood hearts. It’s kind of involved. You cut it up in little wafers and then barbecue ‘em."
Donald Outterson’s Woodstone Creek distillery in Cincinnati went traditional and developed bourbon. "I moved past the idea of an unaged moonshine to a process whiskey," he said, "that develops the huge organoleptic impact people expect from that. Why? There’s nothing interesting in moonshine or cheap beer." Outterson was one of the beer pioneers as well. "Bill and I were pioneers in the brewing industry, cutting trees and blazing a trail. We know how to do it with nothing."
"There’s one opening about every eight weeks," Outterson said. "It’s the next thing." Both Owens and Calagione didn’t think the industry would take off like the rocket craft brewing was; they see a fairly small number of distilleries. "Maybe 400," said Owens, "and that will take 20 years."
Meantime, there’s more out there all the time, though you still have to go looking for it: vodkas, gins, rums, some aged whiskies, spirits of every description and flavor. Eau de vie is a popular product in fruit-producing areas: Oregon’s Clear Creek and McMenamin’s Edgefield distillery both do the fruit spirits (both also do a whisky), as do a number of new distilleries in Michigan.
Be prepared to pay, too. Triple 8 Distillery, the distilling arm of Cisco Brewers on Nantucket, is asking $88 a bottle for their Notch single malt whisky; Duncan Holaday gets over $30 for a bottle of Vermont Spirit vodka. Outterson thinks that’s inevitable. "Because of the economies of scale," he said, "the only choice that’s open to you is the top shelf. It’s going to cost more to make it, so it’s going to cost like it’s better anyway. It might as well taste that way."
If all this sounds a lot like the early days of microbrewing, well, there you are, right down to some questionable product. "There’s a learning curve on this," Sam Calagione admitted, "and there are going to be people who were as cavalier as we were about it, and say, hey, tastes good to me, let’s throw it out there!" He chuckled. "Hopefully consumers will stay open-minded enough to hang on through some early bumblings." They probably will; the consumers have the passion too.
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