February 2025

Building

With the concrete cured, Derek has started to frame the distillery room. First up, the bathroom. He’ll work from there to add the boiler room and enclose the ‘distillery room’ which will house the still and other equipment, then the walk-up window room.  

Business / Community

We have been working with our designer, Lindsay Jaeger, and sign maker, Ben Keneally, to create an outside menu that is weatherproof, informative, and easy to both update and maintain. We’ll offer both alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks and want to be clear and inviting to anyone who walks up.

As awardees of the federal Renewable Energy for America Program (REAP) grant, we’re hopeful it will still fund half of our energy efficiency improvements for our old building (adding insulation, replacing windows, etc.). Our other business related grants are at the state level and seem in good shape, which means we’ll have assistance with purchasing Montana grains for our first whiskies as well as startup marketing funds.

Distillery

Our still is being readied to ship from southern Missouri to Montana. The shipment will include our 500gal hybrid pot still, two 500gal fermenters, a 500gal mash ton, and various accessory equipment.  

For those of you wondering about whiskey, we put in our first order of barrels with Black Swan Cooperage in Park Rapids, Minnesota. We’ll start with both 30gal and 53 gal, some with their patented honeycombed staves which increase the wood surface area and therefore whiskey to wood contact. The smaller barrels allow us to bring aged spirits to you all more quickly as well as expand our product line (ex. blended whiskeys and aging other spirits like gin). The larger barrels leverage economies of scale, as they are around the same price as the smaller options. Derek will likely pick up our first order in April.

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