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Had the opportunity to meet John and Courtney McKee today and take a tour of his fine operation. When he heard I was a hobbyist he gave me the "insider/advanced" tour!
First of all, you need to know that Butte Montana was once a booming mining town full of tough immigrants from all over, but mainly Irish. My mother's family are proud of their Butte heritage, and that's why we maintain a place nearby in Divide.
Butte's economy has fallen on hard times, and the fact that the McKees have clung to the home turf is indicative of John's toughness, smarts and resolve. His wife was incredibly gracious and welcoming, and I immediately felt at ease in their "home".
John is obviously highly intelligent, well spoken and a true connoisseur and spirits fanatic. His product really speaks volumes about his attention to the roots and processes around distillation. But he is unabashedly a modernist as well, employing advanced large scale techniques on a small scale. This is due to his work in the refinery field and his knowledge of large scale, continuous distillation.
He said he'd have a 30' column if his ceiling was higher, but he had to split it into 3 columns. It
is a continuous feed setup. The copper is mainly for show...the columns are actually SS. He has one giant mash tun and 4 big old fermenters on a 70 hour cycle. He has a four day cycle going and can distill at least two different spirits concurrently with his computer controlled small scale refinery still.
He offers gin, blended bourbon from other stock (while he gets his own aged stockpile up), bourbon liqueur, and vodka. They were just bottling his unaged whisky (white dog) today.
I sampled all of his offerings and they are EXCELLENT! The gin used grapefruit rind with the juniper to a very nice, subtle effect. The vodka was a near flavorless neutral, the blended bourbon was smooth, sweet and delicious (3 sources). The best of the lot was the bourbon cream liqueur at 17.5%. It was delicious!!! Had a subtle smokiness that he attributed to never rinsing his rinse tank's charcoal out (from the bourbon blending) and said it imparted a slight smoked flavor that I was detecting. Amazing stuff...I'll be trying to reproduce it.
All in all a really fun visit and he treated me like a peer in the craft. His sister is down in Portland at the New Deal Distillery, so I'm going to use the connection to get in there. He gave me his card and told me to hit him up, so if you have any questions I can't answer I'll pass them on. Pics of his operation to follow!
