Meet Maryland’s MISCellaneous Distillery

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(Upbeat Music)

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Hi I’m Suzanne Henricksen a researcher, and storyteller by trade, and a world explorer,  

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drink local enthusiast by heart. I’m 
traveling the world to celebrate and  

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share the people the process the stories 
and the innovations behind craft alcohol  

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and I can’t wait to share our amazing finds with all of you so let’s get drinking Crafty Cask style

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(Banjo music)

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[Suz] Hello, hello Tippler Nation [Evan] Hey guys!
[Suz] we are here we are at  MISCellaneous Distillery in Mt. Airy, Maryland.  

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[Suz] We are so excited to be here we are going to take a little tour we’re going to do a little taste we’re  

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[Suz] going to learn all about MISCellaneous Distillery really and then we’re going to share it all with all of you!

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(Banjo Music continues)

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[Suz] so how’d you guys get started you’ve 
been around a couple of years right 2000-.  

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[Dan] yeah 2016 we opened uh open our doors at the end of the year. you know for me I wanted to make something  

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[Dan] real physical that was all all mine you know that I could hang my hat on each chair and say I made this  

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[Dan] product and it took a little while to pick up what that was…until I realized I really love, you know rum and really love whiskey

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[Dan] Especially Rye Whiskey

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(Music continues)

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[Dan] so everything is starts here this is an electric steam boiler here that’s our main source of heat  

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[Dan] for ‘Josey Wales’ which is our mash time so ‘Josey Wales’ being the outlaw with the Clint Eastwood movie

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with the movie um- I’m a huge Clint Eastwood fan-
so I had to name at least one piece of equipment after it

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[Dan] and what we do here is we’ll add 
in our raw ingredients in the water  

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[Dan] so for our rums we’re just adding in blackstrap 
molasses with dark brown sugar if you look inside  

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[Dan] we’ve got a great big paddle mixer in there that’s going to mix this all up about 200 RPMs  

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[Dan] and that’s going to get us a nice emulsification- emulsification get that all stirred up and I’ll  

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[Dan] transfer the rum…for fermentation over to one of these and I’ll do open our fermentation for about  

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[Dan] five days. all our whiskies are…for our ryes 100% rye grain everything else added so we don’t do any  

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[Dan] malting without doing any corn by doing barley and then the same idea for our corn whiskey 100% corn  

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[Dan] but for bourbon since I really like rye and bourbon has to be 51% corn, I do 51% corn, and 49% rye

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(indistinguishable)

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[Dan] so this is BRILL’S BATCH BOURBON WHISKY….um, this is the straight version so we have had the straight aging less than 2 years

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[Dan] thats straight only..

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[Dan] so this is actually named after May, my wife’s, grandmother…
[Suz] I was wondering

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(Chatter and laughter)

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[Dan] so well the funny thing was there’s not like  

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[Dan] you know my grandmother was a drinker, my great grandfather lived in Cuba yeah

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[Suz] Sure! Yeah, the stories fit!

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[Dan] with brittle and- we’re celebrating 
her 90th birthday July 4th so  

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[Evan] Oh cool!

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[Dan] you know she’s still with us for a long 
time I was actually like hesitant to put  

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[Dan] her photo on the bottle because the other two have already passed and so there was a little like..  [Suz] sure..

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[Dan] and might tempted fate but anyway she’s she’s still alive she’s and he put the labels out um

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[Suz] and its kind, for her to be alive and like witness this, and be like ‘oh my god its bourbon!’

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[Dan] We saw her a couple months ago, she was like ecstatic, she had a bottle of this sitting on her like credenza whenever, there was like light shining right at it

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[Dan] its like…it’s a photo of her! You know? (laughter)
[Suz] that’s cool!

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[Dan] so 51% corn, 49% Rye

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[Dan] it’s all made the same way you know with the stones and everything but it really just barely means that definition for bourbon, right?

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[Dan] Poncho and Lefty are kind of our finishing stills so basically all our recipes do a double top installation  

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[Suz] it looks like we have something happening in this one-
[Dan] Georgia is our vodka and gin still
[Suz] okay

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[Dan] so we are currently making a vodka, this is off of our uh, rum-run. All of our vodka and gin is molasses based.

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[Suz] I read that! Yeah thats fascinating. There isn’t a lot of great molasses based vodka or gin out there

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[Dan] it’s more expensive

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[Dan] so usually you’re using one of 
those cheapest style of your formula  

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[Suz] right
[Dan] but I really like the flavor of this, it’s a  
unique process
[Suz] and you’re already using molasses

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[Suz] Throughout that whole process for rum and everything, yeah cool

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[Dan] so this is running, we’re going to 
collect about four and a half gallons  

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[Dan] at 95% that’ll be our vodka put it back in the pot the next day  

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[Dan] run it again but this time we’ll 
actually use the gin gasket at the top  

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[Dan] and do a vapor fusion six botanicals in our gin, juniper, pink peppercorn, lemon peel, orange peel, grapefruit peel, (unknown). And that’s it

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[Dan] so that’s a it’s a light contemporary style gin
[Suz] yeah the grapefruit and pink peppercorn sound kinda fun

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(Upbeat music)

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[Suz] the gin is great too..
[Dan] now the gin, the same idea, we got the vodka and then you just add the vapor infusion

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[Dan] with these…sticks..
[Suz] it’s pretty light on the juniper

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[Suz] rose maybe…things that are really like heavy Juniper flavor are not my jam um I actually have been playing around a lot  

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[Suz] more aquavit than gin lately because I love the idea of the botanicals that Juniper is not  

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[Suz] like my favorite, favorite um 
whereas the caraway is kind of fun

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[Suz] Yeah but I like that yours is much more citrusy, and bright and kind of light than like ‘Christmas Tree’

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[Dan] that was the plan you know? It’s the- you still get Juniper, especially on the nose, the Juniper comes

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[Dan] through on that, and it comes bit in the mouth but you know, for the palette  

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[Dan] but for the most part that palette was 
really dominated by the citrus which is what I wanted

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(Music continues)

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[Suz] I haven’t seen is before this kind of yeah yeah yeah so these operate like plates you were saying?

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[Dan’ Exactly they’re just like plates so the 
idea here is that with the bubble caps um  

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[Dan] what you’ll have this is called the ‘Floodinator’ so you’re running cold water through here  

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[Dan] uh basically flooding you know the vapor back into liquid form and it floods these  

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[Dan] two plates so then as that vapor comes up from the pot you know vapor comes up from the pot  

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[Dan] you have a barrier of liquid at the top of these bubble caps so it’s going to come out  

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[Dan] of that vapor form back into the liquid as that vapor form back into it but every time  

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[Dan] it does it use the heavier properties like water behind and the alcohol becomes pure, and pure as it comes through it  

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(Music continues)

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[Dan] so now this is the barrel age version of our rum this is POPI’S FINEST RUM and as you see on the  

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[Dan] bottle this is my great grandfather from Cuba he was born in the states but then moved to Cuba at  

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[Dan] two years of age and lived there until he was in prison in ’59 when Diesta fell and Castro came in  

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[Dan] so he was in prison for about 5 years before they finally released him and then he moved to Puerto  

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[Dan] Rico and live the rest of his life there
[Suz] well I think Popi would be proud that’s that’s nice  

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[Dan] so this is you know been in uh one of those 30 gallon barrels this batch of 650 days we’re now  

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[Dan] even surpassing that you know over 2 years and it just kind of develops this wonderful  

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[Dan] full body flavor again you know keeping it at 50% mostly for the idea of if you want to drink  

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[Dan] this neat [Suz] you can
[Dan] you can but you can also we trust that everybody in the United States has a  

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[Dan] safe reliable source of fresh drinking water so they can proof down to whatever their suiting is  

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[Dan] so the higher I leave it the more you can play with it
[Suz] yeah it’s funny when we do a lot of our  

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[Suz] whiskey tastings we’re constantly kind of trying to teach people that because a lot of people will  

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[Suz] be tasting some of these things you know like Balconies Rye or something that’s like really  

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[Suz] up there and they’re just like it’s ‘woo! it’s too much for me!’ and we’re like ‘okay but that’s intentional actually’  

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[Suz] it’s putting like flexibility in 
your hands that’s not like whoops the distiller  

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[Suz] messed up and they’re making a really hot you know spirit it’s like they’re leaving it hot  

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[Suz] because A: it shows up better in cocktails um and B: now you get to play mad scientist at home  

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[suz] and sometimes you might want it a little hotter and other times you might want it smooth sipping  

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(Music continues)

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[Suz] what are you using these smaller five gallon barrels for?
[Dan] that’s how we started off on all our  

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[Dan] barrel programs so whether it was the bourbon or the rye or the rum we start off with fives ten to  

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[Suz] fifteens and we’re slowly phasing those out focus fully into things [Suz] cool
[Dan] so everything started off  

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[Dan] on that but then we age for less time right 5, 6 months
[Suz] learn a little faster and figure out  

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[Suz] what you want what you like
[Dan] and have truly aged products you know rather than kind of the semi age

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(Music Continues)

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[Dan] so this is barrel aged for 2 years in 
a 30 gallon uh White American Oak  

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[Dan] malt free. um Gertrude was my grandmother on the mother’s side he was also a Rye drinker out in  

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[Dan] Nebraska so we decided that she’s the right person to make this spirit after I used to always go out  

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[Dan] and visit her and shes drinking her Rye and water each night so it’s the same thing but

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[Dan] this was what I was going for, when I knew I was gonna open a distillery, I knew Gertrude was what I wanted to capture

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(indistinguishable chatter)

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[Evan] You said you don’t do, any malting varieties at all just straight rye?

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[Dan] straight rye.

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[Suz] one type of rye?

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[Dan] one type.

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[Dan] and all the grains for all the whiskeys, they’re all milled (indistinguishable)1800s. So we do this so that we don’t heat up the grains

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[Dan] it just kind of nicely breaks apart rather than a rolling mill or hanglin mill thats just heating it up, so we keep a lot more of the oils, keep a lot of that profile in there

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(Music continues)

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[Suz] Tippler Nation we found a treat 
with MISCellaneous Distillery  

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so um we just tasted through their 
entire lineup of 10 spirits and  

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not a bad one in the bunch and in fact amazing 
across the board we just we’re figuring out  

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what we’re gonna take with us um what we’re gonna 
bring back for our giveaways where you can win  

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some of MISCellaneous Distilleries delicious 
spirits as well as some of our other favorites  

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from breweries and cider houses and wineries 
and distilleries around the way so cheers  

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from MISCellaneous Distillery in Maryland and we 
will see you at our next stop soon bye y’all

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(Outro Music plays)