Tag: distillery

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Making Whiskey

Prichard's distillery utilizes two beautiful, old Vendome stills, one for stripping runs, the other for final distillation runs.

Hey, all. April here again.

In the last blog, I mentioned that we were eager to get started using Second Intention Farm’s Jimmy Red corn and springwater to make our own craft whiskey. But we haven’t built our building yet, and without a bonded premise, we can’t yet get our DSP (Distilled Spirits Permit). But there IS another option that fledgling distillery’s use all the time to get products in the queue before they have their own setup. That option is contract distilling.

Last fall, knowing we still had an abundance of corn from the previous year that was literally in the way of the critical project of building our distillery, Chip came up with an excellent way to solve both problems at once. We’d get someone else to turn the farm’s corn and springwater into whiskey and barrel it for us until we could legally store it ourselves on our own premises. It takes four years to age a bourbon and contract distilling would allow us to start that process at least two years sooner.

When it comes to contract distilling there are a whole lot of options. Some distilleries will buy a spirit outright that has already been aged and just put it in a bottle with their label on it (one distillery we know of famously won awards for their bought whiskey before they’d even put a shovel in the ground to build their own). Others will supply the contract distillery with a mash bill they want made to order. In that case, the contract distillery will usually use whatever suppliers they are accustomed to using for their own products.

There are many distilleries that offer contract distilling, since a still that isn’t running isn’t making any money. But for what we had in mind, we knew it would have to be someone local. It was our plan to not only use the mash bill we’ve been testing out for a while now, but to provide the farm’s springwater and heirloom Jimmy Red corn to make it. And we didn’t want to have to transport those materials very far, since we’d be doing it ourselves.

There are several distilleries not too far away from our farm. One of those is Prichard’s Distillery in Fayetteville. We’d met with Mr. Prichard earlier in the year to discuss buying some equipment from him he no longer needed. So we reached out to him about our contract distilling plans. After a little back and forth, a deal was struck and we signed the contract last November.

Now, we just had to finish shucking, shelling, cleaning and milling about 3 ½ tons of corn!

By early December, we had processed and milled – using the hammer mill our miller loaned us – enough corn for the first run, 1500 pounds. We were still in the midst of a severe drought, so collecting the springwater we needed took much longer than we’d anticipated. But by mid December, everything we needed was at Prichard’s, including the barley and wheat we’d purchased from Middle Tennessee’s sole malt barn, Batey Farms, near Murfreesboro. We were ready to cook.

A look down into the interior of the beer still after the first stripping run of our corn whiskey.
A look down into the interior of the beer still after the first stripping run of our corn whiskey.

We’ve covered that whole process extensively on our socials. The first day we cook the corn, add all the other grains, cook all of those, add yeast and then put the finished mash into a fermenter. After about a week, it’s a corn beer, which is siphoned off into a beer still for the stripping run, during which it goes through three stages of distillation. After that, it’s siphoned off into a “spirits” still for the final distillations, which remove any remaining compounds that could negatively impact the flavor of the whiskey.

Distillate from the stripping run is monitored constantly with a hydrometer.
Distillate from the stripping run is monitored constantly with a hydrometer.

With that first run done just before Christmas, January saw us back at the farm getting more corn processed for the second run, which we completed in mid-March. Now, we’re almost finished with the components for the third run, which we plan to send to Prichard’s in the next week or two. Going forward, we’re optimistic that we’ll be able to run another batch each month during the warmer, dryer summer months, hopefully finishing before harvest time comes around again.

The final proofs of Batch 1 and Batch 2 from our first two runs were almost identical.
The final proofs of Batch 1 and Batch 2 from our first two runs were almost identical.

We had enough distillate after that first run to fill a few barrels, but, since we are making multiple runs, Seth Kimball, Prichard’s production manager, plans to wait until all or most of those runs are finished, since we’re making the same recipe every time. Then, we can sample all of the runs and blend them accordingly before we put them into barrels to age.

We’re very happy so far with the product we have (and very eager to see it barrelled). Prichard’s has been an excellent partner to work with. And while this won’t be the bourbon we plan to produce in the future, which will be distilled by us and aged in our own white oak barrels from the farm, we think it will have a distinct and delicious flavor, thanks to the farm’s springwater and Jimmy Red corn.

In the meantime, we have a lot of work in front of us. Thank you for joining us on this journey as we move closer to opening the doors of our uniquely local, farm distillery.

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Jimmy Red Corn

Ears of dark red Jimmy Red heirloom corn

Hello, friends. April here. It’s been a long time since we wrote one of these and we apologize for that. But there’s a whole lot to update you on regarding Engineered Spirits, too much to cover in one post, so we hope you’ll be patient with us just a little bit longer as we tackle the main updates a topic at a time over the next few weeks.

About six years ago now, we started talking about finding a new purpose for the family farm after our family stopped raising beef cattle and “retired” from farming. But when you have a green belt farm with over 100 acres, you can’t just wake up one day and stop farming it. It was a couple of years before James Moore (better known as Chip to his friends and family) came up with the idea of building a farm distillery on the land and talked me (his wife) into it. That’s how we arrived at the name “Second Intention Farm.” Most folks would buy a farm to build a distillery, but in our case, we were building the distillery to save the farm.  

Even then, we knew we wanted to be in control of the ingredients that went into our products as much as possible. All during the lockdowns of 2020, we brainstormed, planned, and did research on the types of grains and botanicals we might grow to use in our products. We decided to start by growing heirloom corn and eventually I found an NPR article discussing a famous moonshiner corn that had been brought back from the edge of extinction, Jimmy Red. It was an interesting story and we like those.

We were able to get the seed of this unique, open-pollinated variety from a co-op in Alabama and then we spent that year and the following, really, just learning how to grow it. I won’t go into all that – our learning curve has been pretty well documented over the last four years on our social media channels, as well as on the farm’s – but ever since, we’ve been saving our own seed and planting and harvesting it with the vintage farm equipment our family owns. 

Jimmy Red produces dark, dark red ears that, when milled, make delicious pink grits, as well as pink cornmeal. Used as cornmeal, it makes anything you’d use that for even more delicious. Most distilleries use cornmeal to make their whiskeys and indeed there are a few using Jimmy Red now. But Chip didn’t want to use cornmeal. He wanted to do what those old moonshiners did and crack it. 

At Moonshine University – the training course for the Kentucky Distiller’s Association – Chip had learned how to cook the corn. But he’d never done it by himself on his own equipment. So, last year, he started practicing, using the farm’s cracked corn, turning it into beer, just going through the process he had learned. This year, he repeated the same process, but with cornmeal instead. Construction has been moving very slowly at the farm, so he figured he might as well practice. That way, once the distillery’s doors are open, we can hit the ground running.

All of this work just to learn the best way to make whiskey and to have a product we can be proud of. We could have bought Jimmy Red from a local farm. We know the farmer well. He has a combine and plants several acres. He uses modern techniques. But he also uses herbicides and pesticides so he can sell his corn on the market at a cheaper price.

We’re just not going to do that. Our corn is grown the way those old moonshiners grew it, with nothing but sun, rain, and a lot of hard work. It’s the farm’s crop, of course, but we know the history of how it was planted, grown, harvested, processed, milled, cooked and fermented. Eventually, we’ll also be able to tell you how it was distilled and barreled, all the way from the seed until you pour it in your glass.

Our goal is nothing less than this: Our corn, our water, our wood. 100% our whiskey. 

Now, we can check that first one off our list.

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Welcome to Engineered Spirits

Engineered Spirits - Petty Branch Road

Anyone who knows me can tell you, I love to cook. I love making an experience to share with people.  I want them to take that “energy of giving” away with them and I want it to make them smile.

Engineered Spirits began as everything does, with an idea. I grew up on a farm in a very rural area. It was a  lot of hard work. I wanted to see the world and experience what other places had to offer, other than just hard work and  daily chores. What I didn’t realize back then was that what I had was very rare. 

After being away for thirty years, it’s time to go  back to be with that jewel. One thing I’ve learned  in my travels is there’s more to land than just farming. The land  has other resources that,  when combined with a vision, can be blended in such a way as to bring the same type of joy I hope to give people when I cook. 

The people I want to celebrate are those like my family. Hard-working thinkers who never just sat by when they thought something could be improved. They all came about it their own way. Independent people. Using what they had and making things better. Sometimes there was collaboration with others on big projects and when that happened, ideas would be bantered about and welcomed, discussed, and respected. 

There are many stories here at the farm. Most happy, some sad, but all with a lesson. So let’s get a beverage and sit a spell. There are tales to tell. 

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