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Chicago's Maplewood has made quite a name for themselves over the years in both the brewing and the distilling worlds. Four Great American Beer Festival medals, a couple of 99 ratings and one perfect 100 score from the blind review panel at Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine®, and most recently a double gold for their Fat Pug single-malt whiskey at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition (along with three additional silvers and a bronze). Producing thoughtful, interesting, and beautifully crafted beverages is in the company’s DNA.
In this episode, host Sydney Jones leads cofounder Adam Cieslak and distiller Adam Smith through a ranging conversation that touches on:
- production scheduling between distillery and brewery
- using former wooden beer vessels as fermentation vessels for spirits
- cleaning and CIP from a brewer’s point of view, with dedicated equipment for certain mashes
- pushing low-pH fermentations for flavorful distillation
- fermenting with Brettanomyces strains before distillation
- brewery experiments for distilling that didn’t work
- building interesting approaches to gin with spruce, peppercorn, rooibos tea, barrel aging, and more
- making gin with non-neutral base spirit
- using finishing casks for spirits with unique character
- overcoming challenges of canned cocktails in formulas, homogenization, and packaging
And more.
G&D Chillers understands that each distillery’s chilling requirements are unique. On every distillery project, G&D offers the front-end design and engineering your team needs at no cost to you. Rebecca Harris, president and head distiller of Catoctin Creek recently shared, “Service after the sale is what really separates the quality of a supplier relationship. G&D Chillers has always been a phone call away when we needed them. For a small business like mine, that partnership makes all the difference.” Whether you distill batch by batch or in a continuous operation, for more than 30 years, G&D has had the proven solution. Visit them today at gdchillers.com.
For more than 11 years, ABS Commercial has been your full-service equipment manufacturer, designing quality distillation equipment ranging from 50 liters to 5,000 liters. Whether you are establishing a new distillery or expanding into a brewstillery, our team of experienced engineers and designers works with you to develop customized distilling solutions. With our consultative approach, we tailor to your production capacity, space constraints, and budgetary considerations to help you create quality, crafted spirits. Contact us today at [email protected] to discuss your customized distilling needs.