Home Distiller

I've finally got around to opening a small distillery in Porto, Portugal. It's called 'Little Faca' (Faca being the Portuguese word for knife) and I've put up our website at https://littlefaca.com/.

We're currently making our first product - a basic gin with an uncomplicated recipe, trying to leave space for each ingredient to be felt - the highlight being fresh Portuguese lemons (or other citrus, as the seasonal availability dictates) - but I have a good lemon tree in my garden.

Additionally, we have just stripped about 200L of low wines (volume after stripping) from an heirloom red corn, I suppose it's similar to Bloody Butcher, but here we call it Milho Rei (King Corn). That's awaiting second distillation and then will go into either a new oak barrel or an STR. We're very fortunate that where we're located, there's a great cooperage about 20km away where the oak gets to season with the sea air.

I do most of the work for the distillery in my spare time, outside of my day job, and currently it's just me and one helper, part-time trying to get this thing airborne!

The website is a little sparse on content at the moment. But there's a short (light) blog post on our corn mash which might be of most interest to the members here.

https://littlefaca.com/newsblog/our-fir ... -milho-rei

If you are planning to visit Porto or Portugal, and want to visit, just send me a message .

This wouldn't have been possible without the wealth on information on this forum, so thank you all

Congratulations. I was in Porto last February and hope to return soon. A visit to see you will be on my list next time.

All the best exploring the new rabbit hole!

Doug

tommysb wrote: ↑Tue Jun 13, 2023 3:25 pm
I've finally got around to opening a small distillery in Porto, Portugal. It's called 'Little Faca' (Faca being the Portuguese word for knife) and I've put up our website at https://littlefaca.com/.

Congratulations !

I took a peek at your website, looking forward to you posting some photos.

tommysb wrote: ↑Tue Jun 13, 2023 3:25 pm I've finally got around to opening a small distillery in Porto, Portugal.

Pictures … or it doesn’t exist!

But seriously, shoot some snapshots and post them here for those of us who can’t make it to Portugal.
ss

Thanks guys.

I am happy to share here some of the less professional, work-in-progress type photos that reflect the reality of doing this on a sort of start-up scale and budget! Compared to the 'face' of our business, I feel the grittier details will be better understood here - but don't look great on the front-page for the business (our website).

This was the space before. A small bar that was closed down due to the pandemic And after MANY months of work (evenings and weekends when I had time, and I had to work abroad for 6 months which stalled the project) - we end up with something like this, which is just about functional. We're using a 100L DES (serbia) copper pot still, and a 50L AliExpress/Distillex Stainless pot still - both electrically powered. The wiring to run the pot still at full power (9kW) isn't finished yet, so we've been doing things on the 50L still instead. We actually stripped about 800-1000L of wash with that small still over about the course of a week, a couple of months ago....

We've done ferments for our corn whiskey in a combination of a couple of plastic 'dornas', used here in winemaking, and blue barrels.
Here's the ferment: During stripping After ferementation slowed a bit and started to clear:


And here's the dorna in the back of my car being brought to the distillery. I just thought it's a funny picture - it fitted with just a few cm clearance on each side!

A few thoughts about the journey so far and the 'business' side of things-


Still size: We are on 100L. I think most people would say 'go bigger'. We started with this because the model was affordable enough for us to start up - but it's clear that going forward, this will have to increase. I think Larry suggests a minimum 380L boiler for distillery to really make sense. I would say that feels about right. Making gin (as we are initially), I think we can get away with a smaller kettle at the start, as the output of saleable product for the input of your time is much greater. Our first foray into making a semi decent quantity of whiskey - is that at the moment, the time and labour involved on the smaller still means that it will not really be profitable or scalable on the current equipment. We are limited by both production area (We are in a small, city-centre location) and power supply though, so huge stills don't make sense here. There's a particular type of still that would probably work really well for stripping large quantities of wash whilst being quite power efficient though...and I imagine in the future we will be using one of those for stripping.

The difference between doing this for fun vs. profit - is that as a business, the bottom line REALLY DOES matter, and so decisions that one might make as a hobbyist, would be quite different as a business owner. As a concrete example - I would really like to produce my own neutral, from Portuguese rice, for our gin. At the moment, it just doesn't make sense to do that, for the business. So we buy in NGS instead. The quality of the final product will not be as high as with a perfect, fastidiously produced in-house neutral as the base - but the production effort with the NGS is reduced such that we can market the product at a reasonable price that we think the market will support.

Probably about 5% of the time involved in getting and keeping this business going is going to be actual distilling. I can't just make whatever I want, whenever I want, I always need to think about DOES THIS MAKE SENSE FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE BUSINESS?

Some similarities between business and hobby distilling exist there though - where, as hobbyists, keeping costs low and improvising and self-building equipment is often the way things are done. In our bootstrapped business model - it's kind of the same.

If I had a huge bankroll, investors, etc etc etc. I would not open the business the way I have. I would probably head right out, buy an iStill, hire someone to operate it, hire some decent marketers to come up with my branding, image etc, and spend my time running other aspects of the business. THAT looks like the best route to making money. However, I've also seen many businesses run like that (particularly breweries), go bust - where the owners were playing with investors money, and probably didn't run things in the way they would have if it was their own cash on the line. Just last night I was reading about
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Londo ... ry_Company which seemed like a great idea, pretty well funded, and managed to go into administration in 2020.

The biggest struggle with this, has probably been the emotional one. I have been plugging away at this project since summer 2020 when I started applying to licenses etc, and there are times when I just wish I wasn't doing it, it's just a huge input of energy, time and money.

The thing that keeps me going, is the thought of the light at the end of the tunnel, the reward for all this toil. And I think we're finally getting there. My goal is to be self-sufficient from this, so that I am not reliant on my day job (which I do enjoy!) to support myself.

One more picture of our Milho Rei about to be milled by our little hammer mill:

I'm wishing you the best of luck on your new adventure
Hope your dreams come true.

Good luck with you project. Thanks for sharing.

Good luck Tommy, hope it works out well for you.

This is pretty interesting. Will be watching this thread!

I like that you can start a distillery on a small still. Unfortunately here in the UK unless your still has a capacity of more than 1800L, you're likely to be refused a licence. You can get a rectifier's licence if you're not producing the spirit, which probably explains the massive explosion of "craft" gin distilleries that have started up and I'm guessing most of them are buying duty paid neutral grain spirit and infusing them with botanicals.

boa sorte.

Great job Tommy. The “tunnel exit” is getting closer. And no, it’s not an oncoming train.

Many micro-breweries started up in the 1990’s here in the USA as the “wave” swept over the country. A portion of those over-capitalized (built too big before developing their market) at the start and struggled with debt for a long time. The competitive markets challenged their cash flow and as a result, many “hopefuls” went out of business or were bought out by larger breweries (think, “buying their markets”).

So, starting at the size you have will keep you from drowning in debt until you can get some of your products to market. Sure, your “salary” will be sweat for a time until your market is established and stable. Hopefully, your cash reserves will sustain you for a while to get to that point. The business won’t make you rich, but it can provide an existence for you. And with time, it will get easier and you’ll be able to grow your business as the economics allows (and the market demands).

Finally, that Portuguese Serbian pot and flute looks fantastic. And I really like the size of it. You may find that it turns into a great “pilot” still, giving you the opportunity to experiment with “specialty spirits” in the future when you’ve grown your markets and upscaled your production.

Question for you: you haven’t talked about bottling or shown any of the equipment necessary for bottling. Do you have labels developed yet?

Hang in there Tommy. And remember to “keep breathing”.
ss

welly wrote: ↑Thu Jun 15, 2023 5:11 am This is pretty interesting. Will be watching this thread!

I like that you can start a distillery on a small still. Unfortunately here in the UK unless your still has a capacity of more than 1800L, you're likely to be refused a licence. You can get a rectifier's licence if you're not producing the spirit, which probably explains the massive explosion of "craft" gin distilleries that have started up and I'm guessing most of them are buying duty paid neutral grain spirit and infusing them with botanicals.

Hi welly -
I am quite familiar with the UK legislation and it's not quite that straightforward- if you look at the HMRC guidance, they CAN grant a license for a smaller still, if you provide them with a viable business plan, and show that it's going to be a viable business etc. I THINK For the stills over 1800L, basically, you tell them that you are going to start producing, and they are OBLIGED to grant the license! (That was my understanding at least!). This is not a bad thing, as you SHOULD have a business plan anyway, and you will need to do one for your distillery.

If you want to know more about the UK system - this book basically explains it very well, and is really a good read regardless of if you are going to set up business there (maybe you had already come across this resource)!

I personally thing the explosion of craft gin is basically that it appears to be much much easier and more profitable to produce gin. I think that the market is becoming a bit saturated with that, to be honest. We are seeing the same kind of explosion of craft distilling here in Portugal with many gin producers arriving in recent years, and one of the reasons that pushed me to go for whiskey, too.

I have seen the wave come and go in the UK with micro breweries, and that wave is arriving to Portugal in recent years. Back in about 2012/13, I think we had 7 small beer producers in the country, and 2015 things start to really increase. Now there are over 100 I believe - and many who have fallen by the wayside.

The trends in UK are a few years behind the US, and in Portugal a few years behind that. Already, we see a few spirit producers doing a similar thing to me, whereas 10 years ago it would have been unimaginable!

StillStirrin' - As of yet - we have no bottling equipment - or labels!

I am going to the distillery this evening to help my colleague run some more gin to blend into our last run, to give us about 50L of product which we will put into our first batch of 100x 50cl bottles in a few weeks.
There are some producers around here that make nice gravity fed bottling equipment common in wine production, so i need to pick one of those up and get the stuff bottled in a few weeks after it's all married and mellowed in a stainless tank.

Oh and if anyone is on instagram, we now have an account there - @little.faca

Just signed up for the newsletter and looking forward to seeing some product added to the site. Hope all is going well with your project. Best of luck! I’m in Madrid and would like to make the trip next year to Porto.

Boa sorte with your project, pá.

I am coming to Minho for xmas to be with family in Braga. If I have ways of Porto (except the airport) I will look you up.

/Pal

My timing is off we visited Porto last April would loved to visit your distillery, congratulations.

Are you making your own neutral for your gin?

Ola PalCabral, you are welcome to visit if you get a chance and anyone else from here is most welcome!

Not making our own neutral at the moment Windy.

It's been a bumpy ride the last 12 months or so - we had the bar open for tastings, and then the bar itself started to grow and grow, to the point that we didn't have any time to distill, as all energy went on to servicing the bar....This was alongside another job.

At that point I had to make a hard decision, and we closed the bar. The idea being that we need to get the distilling working properly before we reopen the bar. The aim is to be a distillery with a small bar/tasting room rather than a bar with a distillery attached. That's very hard for immediate cashflow but strategically I hope it is the better choice...

Right now we reopened for some pop-up sales for christmas presents, and it's been really inspiring to see the enthusiasm of those locals who are supporting us.

Last week we took 150kg of organic lemons which are already macerating to be turned into limoncello

Sometimes people from all over the world find this thread and contact me too via instagram or email, which is kind of cool!

Rock on, Dude!