Spirit Works Distillery

Spirit Works is a ‘grain to bottle’ distillery meaning that unlike many other artisan distillers who buy in grain neutral spirit, the Marshalls start with red winter wheat from Sacramento, Californian which they ferment and distil to make their own base spirit.

The wheat is turned into grist using a small hammer mill. This is then pumped into the German made mash tun with purified water and scarification enzymes and heated to turn the grains starch into fermentable sugars. The sugary liquid produced (wort) is then pumped into the water jacket cooled fermenter where fermentation lasts three days producing a wort (beer) at 10 - 11% alc./vol..

They then distil on the grain using a Carl 800 litre copper hybrid pot still. This has two rectifying columns alongside the pot allowing the pot still to directly feed to the condenser or via either of the two columns, so allowing them to distil vodka, gin and whiskey using the same still. The first run using the pot still directly feeding the condenser produces low wines at 36 - 46% alc./vol.. Subsequent distillations employ the columns.

The first, shorter column has five rectification plates and is used to make whiskey. The second column has 21 rectification plates (reaching 26 feet high) allowing the production of neutral spirit at over 95% alc./vol. which is bottled as their vodka and also used as the base of their gin. To make gin, the neutral spirit is redistilled in the pot still with seven botanicals, this time bypassing the two columns and directly feeding the condenser.

Both the vodka and the gin are charcoal and chill-filtered prior to bottling.