Sunday, October 26, 2008
Edible Finger Lakes Magazine
On Friday, Thomas and I attended the launch party for an exciting new publication: Edible Finger Lakes. The quarterly magazine will feature stories about the local food scene in Central NY. It was great getting to know some of the folks involved in this movement and everyone seemed pretty excited about the distillery opening up.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Pagoda roof added
The builders recently added our cupola with pagoda top making our building even a little taller...
Sunday, October 12, 2008
More spirits from the Finger Lakes
Montezuma Winery (on the Cayuga Wine Trail) just opened their distillery - Hidden Marsh Distillery this past weekend. We wish Bill Martin and his family well in this new venture and look forward to collaborating with them to offer great distilled spirits from the region.
The Rochester Democrat & Chronicle ran a story on the grand opening and included a mention about Finger Lakes Distilling (and photo of our family).
http://www.democratandchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008810120330
The Rochester Democrat & Chronicle ran a story on the grand opening and included a mention about Finger Lakes Distilling (and photo of our family).
http://www.democratandchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008810120330
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Thomas Earl's Distilling 101
Educating people about distillation - the process, science and tradition of distilling - is a big part of our game plan at Finger Lakes Distilling. This is the first in a series of blog posts where we'll try to enlighten our readers (and hopefully future customers) about the products we are going to be crafting. These informative posts will be provided by our Master Distiller, Thomas. So whenever you see his smiling face (below), class is in session...
We have had a lot of people say, "wow, we're excited about the new distillery. When will we be able to taste some of the wine you will be making?" We have to explain the difference between a winery and a distillery. A winery crushes and presses grapes and ferments them into a wine. We too will make a wine in the case of our vodkas and brandies. However, we will take it a step further.
The definition of distillation- to take a liquid and heat it to the point of evaporation and condense the vapor back into a liquid. Here at Finger Lakes Distilling we will make a wine from locally grown grapes, then put it into our column still. By heating the wine with a steam jacket surrounding the pot, it will begin to vaporize. Because alcohol has a lower boiling point (172 degrees) than water (212 degrees) the vapors at the beginning of the run will have a higher concentration of alcohol. That is how we can take a liquid like wine with around 12% alcohol up to spirit strength.
We'll implement a similar process with other fruit mashes and in the case of whiskey, with grain-based mashes. But we'll save that for next time.
We have had a lot of people say, "wow, we're excited about the new distillery. When will we be able to taste some of the wine you will be making?" We have to explain the difference between a winery and a distillery. A winery crushes and presses grapes and ferments them into a wine. We too will make a wine in the case of our vodkas and brandies. However, we will take it a step further.
The definition of distillation- to take a liquid and heat it to the point of evaporation and condense the vapor back into a liquid. Here at Finger Lakes Distilling we will make a wine from locally grown grapes, then put it into our column still. By heating the wine with a steam jacket surrounding the pot, it will begin to vaporize. Because alcohol has a lower boiling point (172 degrees) than water (212 degrees) the vapors at the beginning of the run will have a higher concentration of alcohol. That is how we can take a liquid like wine with around 12% alcohol up to spirit strength.
We'll implement a similar process with other fruit mashes and in the case of whiskey, with grain-based mashes. But we'll save that for next time.
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