When we opened in April 2013, agave was the primary spirit that we produced. It was a niche that nobody was really doing. At a time when there weren’t nearly as many craft distillers around as there are today, we wanted to create something different in the marketplace.
We rebranded the line a few years ago, and it’s now called Hacedor. Hacedor means doer, or maker. And that really came out of original founder Sean Smiley and me—we build things, we do things. Sean built the tasting room; I weld, I paint, I do home construction. We’re just doers, so we wanted to tie it back to our personalities.
At State 38, we sell three types of Hacedor agave:
- Blanco: This is our silver and our second-best seller. A bottle retails for $39.
- Reposado: We always age this in our used bourbon barrels for nine to 12 months. This is our best seller by a little bit. A bottle retails for $49.
- Anejo: We age this in new white American oak barrels for at least a year. This one sells a bit less than the other two, but it’s at a higher price point: $59. Except for our special-release whiskeys, this is our most expensive spirit.
Sourcing Agave
We’re the longest-running producer of agave spirits in Colorado. There are some other Colorado-based distillers who sell tequila, but they have it produced in Mexico, which is why they can use the word “tequila.” We produce our agave here in Colorado, and we source our Blue Weber (or Weber Azul) variety of agave from Jalisco, Mexico, so it’s the same ingredient used in authentic tequila.
The agave comes in 1,000-liter totes—processed, concentrated, and pasteurized. It’s a thick, viscous, syrupy liquid. We’ve explored samples of other agave—both the raw agave and the final product. Some of the agaves they use to make mezcal are interesting, but they’re not quite what we’re looking for at State 38.
Blue Weber agave prices have gone through the roof. Four years ago, it was about $1,500 for a tote; now it’s closer to $5,400. A lot of that is due to the rising popularity of tequilas in general. More suppliers and manufacturers are producing them, and it takes seven to 10 years for a new plant to mature to the point that it can be used for tequila. So, it takes time for the agave-plant supply to catch up with the demand for tequila and agave spirits.
Fermentation
I think our agave is a little cleaner, a little more refined—that’s not to say others are inferior; it’s just a style of production. A lot of our success has been based on the fermentation process that we’ve created.
Agave poses specific challenges because it’s grown in a similar climate to Colorado—it’s high desert. There’s a lot of volcanic activity in that region, however, so you get a lot of sulfur that can come through the nectar and through the final product if you’re not careful.
Using a quality distiller’s yeast that is successful for agave is important. Then, you need to control fermentation to the point that you’re not creating more sulfur character or bringing out the natural sulfur character.
To help combat the sulfur character, we use open fermentation techniques. We don’t let the fermentation get too hot—we keep it pretty low, but the key is to keep it active. We use heated blankets to wrap the totes during fermentation—you plug the blankets in, wrap the totes and set the temperature. If it goes too low, it’s going to stop—you’re walking a fine line. We also ferment for longer—about two weeks for the agave spirits versus as few as four days for a rum.
Distilling the Agave Spirit
We have a steam-jacketed hybrid still. Using the valves, we can convert it to be a pot or a column still. It’s a stainless-steel, 250-gallon (946-liter) pot, and on top of that we have a copper column, and then on top of the copper column we have a dephlegmator. Because we make a variety of spirits, we really needed a jack-of-all-trades still.
For the Hacedor line, we use only the top of the pot, and then a single distillation plate is horizontal. The other five plates are vertical because we want the flavor profile of the agave to come through the spirit—as opposed to when you’re doing a vodka, which by definition should be odorless and tasteless. So, in essence, we’re running the agave like a pot still.
Overall, we make our cuts pretty narrow to ensure the quality of the products is at the level that we want them to be. We do the same heads cut on all three varieties—we don’t like that heads taste in our spirits. For the Reposado and Anejo, we’ll go a little deeper into the tails because some of the oils that come out of the tails will do some nice things over time in the barrel. For the Blanco, we’ll come out of the hearts a bit faster; we’re letting that sit for a short period, giving it a charcoal filtering and then bottling it.
Selling Agave
From a marketing perspective, selling agave is a bit of a challenge. A lot of folks get a whimsical look on their faces when you tell them there’s a tequila from Golden, Colorado. Here in the tasting room, when someone is sitting in front of us, we can really explain it to them. More importantly, we can pour them a little taste.
We probably hear it once a week: “Oh, I had a bad experience with tequila.” My standard response comes in two parts: One, “You’re not in college anymore.” And two, “This is not Jose Cuervo. It’s not sugar-based.”
We’re doing more than a dozen events a month to promote the spirits—from cookies-and-spirits pairings to holiday markets. We won’t do events unless we can sell our bottles directly to the consumer, especially around the holidays. When you have someone in front of you and they’re tasting the Reposado, and they say, “That’s really good,” it’s my opportunity to sell a bottle. If I have to tell them to go to the liquor store and find it, they might not do that.
When determining our price point, we look at both the cost of goods and then where we want to be in the market. We want to be in that middle tier, what I would call moderately priced. We certainly want to represent the quality of the process that we think we have, but we also don’t want to be in that top tier. We’re looking to build our brand.
Drinking Hacedor Agave
We treat our agave the same way we treat a whiskey, and a lot of people drink it neat. However, a lot of people think agave and think cocktails. Specifically for cocktails, here’s how we serve the different types.
Blanco
We use coconut-shell activated carbon for filtering Blanco, and it imparts a sweet, clean, crisp profile. The most popular cocktail we make out of this is a blood-orange margarita. It uses San Pellegrino blood orange, and it’s our skinny marg—a little lime juice, give it a stir, it’s fantastic. In the winter, we make what we call a café agave: It’s cold-pressed coffee and heavy cream with a winter-spiced simple syrup and grated cinnamon on top. We also make a mojito using Blanco instead of rum.
Reposado
Reposado is certainly a sipper for many regulars, but the primary cocktail is our State 38 Margarita, which is our traditional marg. A fun drink that’s been a staple of the distillery since we opened is a Creamy Root Beer Reposado: equal parts Reposado, cream soda, and root beer. This is one of those drinks that when someone orders it in the tasting room, we end up selling a few. We also make a Mexican mule with the Reposado, and we do another one called the Winter’s Kiss.
Anejo
The Anejo old fashioned and Sazerac are both popular. For the old fashioned, we don’t use Angostura bitters, as is traditional; we use Fee Brothers orange bitters, which I think go a little better with the Anejo.