FROM FARM TO FLASK

How do you distill the adventurous Spirit of Colorado? It all starts with the best ingredients, like heirloom grown, locally sourced grains and our own garden grown herbs and botanicals. Our head distiller, Laura Walters, then crafts each of our award-winning and approachable spirits with a nod towards tradition while creating maximum flavor and a unique character.

Locally Sourced Ingredients

Sweet heirloom blue corn grown on the Eastern Plains of Colorado creates the nutty flavor of our Colorado Bourbon Whiskey. Ponderosa Pine needles harvested from a tree on the grounds of our distillery flavors our Ponderosa Gin. Herbs and botanicals grown in our distillery gardens flavor our spirits, liqueurs, and bitters. We believe in using locally sourced ingredients whenever we can. They’re fresher, taste better, and are better for the planet.

Meet Our Stills

We use three custom hybrid copper stills made in Denver to distill our spirits. Each still has a pot base with a small plated column attached. 

Big Karl -
Our 300-gallon stripping still, or Karl as we call him, is unique in the fact that it is three times the size of the other two stills. All of our wash is transferred into our stripping still for its first distillation. Karl’s purpose is to strip the wash of everything that resembles the yeasty beer like product and transform it into a clear distilled spirit. We do not take any cuts from Karl. We keep all the product we can so we can get more accurate cuts on the second distillation.

Margo -
After Karl, our product runs through our spirit still, Margot! This still is where the column of our hybrid stills becomes very important. As the product runs through the still, we make our cuts. The heads cuts are done by taste by the distiller and the tails cuts are made by recipe. The purpose of the spirit still is to further refine the product into something we want to drink. 

Tamila -
The botanical still, or Tamila as we call her, looks and operates the same as the spirit still with one exception. On the top of the copper column there is a basket that holds botanicals for one of our gins, Aquavit, or Alpine Absinthe. Botanicals can be incorporated into a spirit into two ways, through maceration (basically steeping) and boiling or vapor infusion. Ironton uses both methods. As the vapor passes through the column and basket on Tamila, it picks up the oils from the botanicals inside. 

Our Barrels

Our whiskeys are aged in Char Number 2 53 gallon new American Oak barrels for a minimum of 2 years. Once our whiskeys have finished aging, we use the barrels to age our Genievre Gin, Aquavit and Platinum Rum to create cask finished versions of those spirits.

And when that’s done, friends like Blue Moon, Mockery Brewing, Great Divide Brewing, Holidaily Brewing, Lefthand Brewing, and Bluegrass Coffee take our leftover barrels and create some tasty products with them!