Take a tour of Storm King Distilling in Montrose, Colorado, and you’ll see many of the usual production staples—a 1,000-liter still, stainless tanks for mashing and fermentation, and bottles and labels ready to finish products for distribution.
Finally, along the eastern wall of the facility, there’s a striking wooden vessel that holds the distillery’s flagship product: a blended whiskey called Side Gig.
This is no ordinary foeder—or, at least, it doesn’t look like one. The egg-shaped vessel stands seven feet tall—or a bit more than two meters—and it’s five feet wide at its broadest point, near the bottom. And, because it’s technically a horizontal foeder, it protrudes only two-and-a-half feet out from the wall. Looking at it head on, it appears almost two-dimensional.
“It’s Just Sexier”
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David Fishering, Storm King’s cofounder and distiller, purchased his big brown egg in October 2023; for years, he’d been blending Side Gig whiskey in plastic IBC totes. The foeder is only lightly toasted, so he doesn’t expect it to impart much flavor to the already-aged spirits that go into it. However, after Side Gig won the title of Best American Whiskey at the 2023 World Whiskies Awards—inspiring an influx of sales—Fishering says he wanted to invest in a large-format vessel that the spirit deserved.
Side Gig is Fishering’s “infinity barrel” project—it’s a blend of almost every one-off recipe he’s made, and then some. The oldest expression in the blend, so far, is three years old. He considered upgrading from totes to a stainless-steel tank. He changed his mind after chatting with the egg’s maker, St. Louis–based Foeder Crafters of America.
“Honestly, it’s just sexier,” Fishering says. Plus, because Storm King’s production footprint is modest, the egg is a practical choice. “This [egg] has 310 gallons in it, and right next to it are stacks of six barrels on two-barrel racks,” and those barrels have roughly the same volume. “That unit sticks out from the wall two feet more and is two feet higher than the foeder. … The barrels take up way more space.”
Lack of space is the No. 1 problem that Foeder Crafters can help beverage makers solve when they buy a wooden vat for aging or fermentation, says owner Dan Saettele. He describes his company as a custom shop with templates that clients can modify to fit their specific needs.
Foeder Crafters began engineering and selling egg- and oval-shaped foeders in 2014 after its original founder saw similar designs from European makers. (Saettele bought the company in 2020.) They also build and sell the more traditional, cylindrical vats commonly used in beer and wine production. Most of their customers are breweries, but in recent years Saettele has seen an uptick in the number of spirits producers seeking large-format vessels for aging and blending. Exactly how large depends on the distillery and, again, their space.
Bespoke Foeders
Most folks looking for a foeder start with an optimal volume in mind. From there, Saettele says, they consider any other constraints to find the best fit and shape for each respective client.
For example: At A. Smith Bowman Distillery, in Fredericksburg, Virginia, that meant configuring the vessel’s specs to fit a 10-by-10-foot hole in the stillhouse wall. For others, it could mean a design that meets the weight limits of a mezzanine where it will reside.
Foeder Crafters works with a local sawmill to source and cut its wood—all of it American white oak from Missouri—and assembles each vessel in-house. Much like other cooperages, it works with buyers to determine the desired level of toast, steam, and char before adding accessories, ports, or glass so that distillers can see the fill level.
Prices start at about $8,000, Saettele says, and they go up depending on form and volume. Eggs and ovals are made-to-order, and the process takes about eight weeks.
Applications in the Distillery
Justin Aden, head blender at Stranahan’s Whiskey in Denver, says they use three oval foeders to blend and age various expressions of their signature Blue Peak American Single Malt. In a process similar to the solera method, they never empty the vessels all the way; instead, they continue to add whiskeys of various ages.
Each foeder holds whiskeys of specific ages, which they marry together as desired before adding them to an even larger blend. That helps Aden target the precise flavor profiles he wants, so he can modify them on the fly and maintain consistency from bottle to bottle. He compares using the foeders for a “solera finish” to having a well-seasoned cast-iron skillet that you don’t want to wash.
“My personal style as a blender, I’m not a huge fan of air or oxygen when I let things marry for a long time,” Aden says. “I always have the ability to fill them all the way up. … The fuller you get, you have little headspace ratio compared to liquid inside.”
Isaac Winter, director of distilling at Constellation Spirits, recently purchased a pair of 15-barrel, egg-shaped foeders; he plans to experiment with them at subsidiary High West Distillery in Park City, Utah. Given his background in brewing—he was head R&D brewer at Uinta in Salt Lake City until 2017—Winter is especially curious about how the shapes might impact the flavors of High West’s bourbon and rye whiskey, which are currently resting in them.
The eggs offer less surface-area contact between the liquid and the wood than barrels, but they offer more than a typical beer or wine foeder. Winter says he hopes that they influence oxidative maturation and impart a gentle double-wood effect.
“The ability to add a kiss of extra oak influence is exciting,” he says. He also admits that his initial interest wasn’t limited to the vessels’ usefulness in making whiskey. “There’s some part of me that really liked the aesthetics.”
“Like a Work of Art”
Chris Hansen, CEO of Seguin Moreau Napa Cooperage, says he knows that sometimes flash can supersede function. Based in Merpins, France, the company has made barrels for more than a century; it also makes foeders, tanks, and other less conventional vessels.
Take, for example, the GalileOak—like “Galileo,” with a k at the end—a spherical vessel that rotates on an axis like a globe. Hansen says that the original design was a concrete fermentation vessel that winemakers could spin using a crank to agitate the liquid and lees inside. Once the engineering was sound, Seguin Moreau opted to build it with French oak instead—no easy feat, Hansen says.
The result, however, is more than simply a vessel. Mounted on its metal base, the GalileOak stands more than six feet tall, holds about 400 gallons of liquid, and weighs more than 1,300 pounds when empty.
“The idea is it’s going to be a showpiece,” Hansen says, “like a work of art.”
Hansen estimates that Seguin Moreau has sold fewer than 10 spheres to commercial operations worldwide—including just one in the United States—since their use case is niche in the wine industry. (It may also be because the price tag is close to EU€60,000, or about US$64,500.) Still, the GalileOak is a head-turner.
“There’s a big wine show in Sacramento every January. We have a display unit, and when we bring it, everybody stops to look at it,” Hansen says. “People want to turn it, to take pictures and videos. It does draw a lot of people.”
Not for Every Distillery
At Foeder Crafters, Saettele estimates that he’s sold foeders to no more than a couple dozen distilleries in the past four years. Large-format foeders are unlikely to ever replace barrels altogether, he says, because many distillers—especially in the bourbon business—need first-use oak.
“Our products are meant to be reused forever and outlast the distillers themselves,” Saettele says. The foeders are virtually leak-proof, which is one reason that Foeder Crafters gets repeat customers. Drawbacks include the inability to gauge how much liquid is inside, whether by sight or weight (although ports can be added).
At Constellation Spirits, Winter says he’d like to try foeders with different toast and steam levels—the latter removes some tannins from the wood—and perhaps even different shapes, to see what the impact will be on his spirits.
“Foeders are like tattoos—you get one, and you’re going to want another one,” he says. “Be ready for that addiction to set in.”
