I said I would get back with a review after I visited distillers row in Oregon. My son and I went after our cousins all got together to make and exchange Norwegian cookies so we got a late start plus I was driving from Vancouver to Portland so did not want to over endulge. We went to two of the six distilleries. Integrity Spirits and New Deal Distillery.
I will start with the second distillery "New Deal" I actually liked their products they make both Vodka and Liqueurs. The owner said he had been distilling since 2001 and has had his license since 2004. He gave my son and I a tour of his stills. They are all homemade by a local person and although the stills looked nice he was collecting all of his neutral through food grade plastic both pipes and a large 30+ gallon buckets. I asked him about it and he said that he would like to have all copper but it was very expensive and he has been doing it this way since 2004. I let it go at that and he saw that I had some knowlegdge about it and tried to sell me one of his first stills that was packed with marbles. I liked his stills he was using however and he made his own jackets that covered them while running.
The first distillery Integrity Spirits I was most impressed with. They made Gin, Vodka, and Absinthe all excellent. When I asked him with his gin if he used a gin basket or just infused it. At that comment he perked up and although he was there alone and was very busy he let my son and I tour the stills by ourselves in the back. I took several pictures that I will share in at the end of my critique. Most of the product flavor is done through infusion in mesh bags, he showed me the mesh bags and they had different sizes depending on how fine the ingredience that he was infusing was. The Gin was infused with a blend of herbs and spices with soft juniper notes and a hint of cucumber. The Gin was 45% and so was a bit stronger than others I have had. They had several types of Vodka on a Hazelnut with a slight chocolate flavor, and they had one made from Saffron, and their final product was Absinthe. I liked all 5 samples I had. As I asked him questions he asked if I was a distiller and I said I am interested in it. He immediately said I should join Homedistiller if I plan to make my own as they promote safety . At the end he could not sell that day for some reason but gave me a free bottle of Asinthe because he enjoyed talking to me. Their two stills were a Carl Brennereien and an Alembic. I am going to post pictures of the Alembic as I have a question that he wasn't sure of the answer and said if I could find out let him know so I will pose the question to this forum.
What is the screen for at the end of his parrot? He wasn't sure but thought it might be to keep bugs out of the collection. Below are the pictures of the still and several pictures of the parrot.
- Alembic Still
- view of parrot attached to still
- Parrot showing the screen
- Parrot showing the screen
There is some type of brewshop or distillery over in Pensacola. I need to check it out. Sounds like ya'll had a good time.
