The following pictures were captured by Pete Rodman during a recent visit to our Bowling Green Distillery.
Corsair Gin
Alcohol begins to boil off during a test run of the 240 gallon wash still.
Ben pours Corsair's first aged whiskey: 100% Rye
Corsair currently has 6 spirits aging including rum, bourbon and several experimental whiskeys.
Rod fills the still for a new whiskey run.
Ben keeps an eye on the condensing coils.
Brady checks on the small still.
Corsair’s gin won the gold medal at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition!
From the SFWSC website:
The San Francisco World Spirits Competition is the first comprehensive, international spirits judging ever held in the United States on an annual basis. Founded in 2000 by directors of the San Francisco International Wine Competition, Anthony Dias Blue and Carol Seibert, the Spirits Competition continues each year to grow in entrants as well as stature within the industry.
We use two copper pot stills in production, our 50 gallon hybrid pot still and our 240 gallon antique still.
Our 240 gallon still is a circa 1920 classic pot still that survived prohibition. Originally a gin still, we use it for the first or “wash” pass when making whiskey. The unfinished whiskey spirit resulting from the first distillation, called low wines, is finished in our 50 gallon still.
In addition to being our spirit still for whiskey, where we do a second distillation on the low wines and cut the heart of the distillate as clear whiskey (“white dog”), our 50 gallon still makes most of our other distilled spirits. Four plates in the still’s column, each of which can be disabled, give us the flexibility to distill various spirits. We disable this column and shunt spirit vapors to still’s vapor basket to make our gin-head style gin. Extracting the flavors of gin’s botanicals via vapor, rather than soaking the juniper and other herbs in liquid alcohol, yields less bitterness and, we think, a brighter, fresher gin.