We are over a year into this adventure in building this distillery, and it has been an amazing ride. From a simple text “Want to make moonshine?”, we’ve created this brand and had a great adventure along the way.
When I reflect on the last 18 months, we went from an idea and no experience to gaining some solid experience (thanks to Don and Brandon at Last Straw Distillery). We’ve created a great partnership with Durham College and get to work with some awesome restaurants in Durham Region (check out Where to Enjoy Us on the main page). I think we have some good sales, given that we do this as our third jobs, having full-time jobs and being parents on top of this.
We are now at the part of the adventure where we are going deeper into the wild, moving this from part-time “hobby” to a proper business. We will be getting our distillers license, starting to find funding to build our distillery, looking to offer Batch 2’s of Wheat Kings Vodka and Strawberry Fields Gin, and building our whiskey mash bill. Wanting to build the business where this is the main job.
I am going to use this blog to keep visitors updated on what we’re up to, what’s new in the adventure, how we are building this brand and general musings.
I Will aim to provide weekly updates on what is going on and what is coming up.
Before we get into the first update, I thought I should use this first post to thank the people that have helped us get to this point.
My wife, Erica, gets the first Thank You. Doing this as a part-time job takes me away from her and the kids most Saturdays. She has been a great cheerleader and partner through all of this. She has embraced what we’re trying to do and given me the runway to do it. No matter what happens with the business, I will always be grateful to her for letting me try.
Of course, Mike, our other Co-Founder, gets a big Thank You. I can safely say that without him, we would not be where we are today. He has been instrumental in finding out the best ways to improve our processes and saving time. He’s taken a step back for a bit, but when he’s ready, there will be a skid of grain and a mash tun waiting for him.
Don and the team at Last Straw Distillery also deserve a huge Thank You. From taking the first meeting with us to talk about opening a distillery (not as easy as you would think) to helping us get Wheat Kings Vodka to market. Don is always a fountain of knowledge/information and is willing to share and help us troubleshoot problems. They say Distillers help Distillers, and Don is a great example of that.
Finally, Jon at EyeBeam Design. He does an amazing job of bringing our vision for all of the elements that we use to represent the brand to life. From fixing our logo, creating the visual style of our labels and creating this great website. Jon often gets a scan of a rough idea that looks like a five-year-old drew it, and he makes it into something great.
Today (Sat. Oct 13) I am distilling the wheat spirit, that we can use for Wheat Kings or Strawberry Fields; it should be ready in the next month. We inch closer to getting our distillers license, and we then can sell directly to the LCBO, hoping to build our exposure.
Chris – Co-Founder/Head Distiller