Small Batch Malt Whiskey
When we say, "hand crafted," we're not joking. When we make a whiskey, it comes out of our still into carboys. We move product from carboys to barrels. We put the barrels on the wall, and we wait. After the years roll by we crack a barrel, proof it down to 80, and release it for sale.
Our malt whiskey has 100% malted barley in the grain bill. No corn. No GNS. Just barley.
Amber Rum
We made our first batch of rum in 2015. Some of the rum we have on our barrel wall is going on eight years old.
It's now dark. Rich. Complex. And delicious. We sell it at 80 proof.
Other brands have asked us to make their rum for them. We haven't done that yet--but stand by. We do know our way around rum.
Balancing Act Gin
We worked on making gin for years. We consulted experts. We sampled every craft gin in North Carolina. We convened focus groups. We tasted. We infused. We weighed out botanicals, labeled mason jars, we waited for flavors to marry, and we failed over and over again. Gin is hard. That's what we learned.
At one point we made a batch out of red cedar berries. That is our native juniper, after all--and we are hyper local food freaks, so it made sense. Until we tasted it. It was like licking a pine tree.
Balancing Act Gin is made from juniper, angelica, lavender, lemon, coriander and dill.
We sell it at 80 proof.
Apple Brandy
We are probably best known for our apple brandy.
We buy our apples in the mountains of North Carolina, when the apple harvest is on.
Nowadays we buy sixty thousand pounds of apples at a time. There isn't an orchard in the state that has that much fruit on hand on any given day. So when it's crushing time we get fruit from a variety of growers.
Different apple varieties have big years and small years--late frost can kill all of the pink lady crop, for instance. That makes each batch of apple brandy different.
Our apple brandy is 100 proof. That's a throwback to our years in the craft cocktail market via the ABC system. Bartenders like to work with higher proof spirits. These days we sell our bottles at our distillery at the Plant in Pittsboro.
We age our apple brandy in used bourbon barrels
in the same rick house we store our whiskey and rum. Come for a tour. The rick house smells great.
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Flying Pepper Vodka
The pepper we use for our Flying Pepper Vodka was developed on a farm on our campus at the Plant in Pittsboro. The farm was once home to a pepper breeder. It's an aji dulce tobago pepper that has had the heat bred out of it, leaving a smoky taste.
Each pepper is hand cut, inspected, and added to an intense pepper concentrate. That concentrate is then blended down to create our peppery flavored vodka.
Nowadays we contract our pepper growing to Little Pond Gardens. The food miles on these peppers is about fifty yards. They are grown across the street.
Flying Pepper makes the best Bloody Mary in town. We sell it at 80 proof. And we sell tons of it.
Small Batch Rye Whiskey
The year we decided to make a rye whiskey we couldn't find any locally grown rye grass in North Carolina, so we reached into Virginia.
Epiphany in Durham did the malting. They shipped the malted product to BMC Brewing (across the street from us). BMC ground it up and created a "wash." We loaded the still and got walloped.
100% malted rye in the grain bill is lively. We didn't think to cut it with corn, or wheat, or rice, or any of the other grains commonly found in rye whiskey.
Then we did what we always do. We barreled it up, put it on the wall and forgot about it.
The other day we pulled some of our rye from the barrel, proofed it down to 80%, and tasted it against a bunch of other rye whiskeys.
That's how we know it is ready to enter the world. Stand by.