Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Local microdistillery: Woodstone Creek

A new microdistilling movement, spearheaded by the good folks at American Distillers Institute, is producing artisan distilled liquors like those made here in Cincinnati by Woodstone Creek, Ohio's first licensed microdistillery.

Woodstone Creek's planned products include blended, single-malt, and bourbon whiskeys, rum, and vodka. Their vodka (which was rated as the top vodka tasted by a CityBeat panel) has been released and is now available at local liquor stores. I just found Woodstone Creek Vodka at my local wine shop, The Wine Store in Montgomery, a great little store which makes a point of carrying items from local producers.

Woodstone Creek, like many small family-owned businesses, can only survive with help from local consumers. Ask for Woodstone Creek vodka at your local liquor store. If they don't have it, ask them to get it. If you like it, go back and tell the shopowner.

2 comments:

CityKin said...

Interesting. Thanks for posting.

Walter Jeffries said...

Over on my Sugar Mountain Farm blog on the Boar Tasting post you asked about how much testing is necessary and if we still castrate for customers who request it.

Val, 30 months isn't necessary for testing. I just keep on going with older and older boars because eventually we replace them and I am very curious as to how they taste.

For our experiment we began by testing fairly young boars. I was satisfied once we had taste tested several boars from our herd older than eight months. All were taint free.

Having never found any taint and having done a lot of reading about it I came to the conclusion we don't have it in our herd, be it the genetics, the feed or the management style on pasture.

We will castrate boar piglets for customers, turn them (the boars, no the customers) into barrows. I do charge extra for castration and people need to order the piglet well in advanced so it can be done when the piglet is as young as possible. At this point we get almost no requests for barrows between the education campaign I've been waging and the fact that the barrows are more expensive. I also think many people appreciate the more humane approach to not castrating.

Local distilleries and micro-breweries are an excellent source of boiled grain for pigs and chickens. When they boil the grain they are removing the sugars to ferment in the next step. The mash that is left is high in protein and fiber and very digestible. I have read these distiller grains can cause trouble for cattle but they're ideal for swine and poultry who naturally have such things in their diet. The boiled barley we we occasionally get from the local micro-brewery smells delicious, like barley soup which I love.

Cheers,

-Walter
Sugar Mtn Farm
in Vermont