Engineered Spirits @EngineerdSpirit

One of the most important decisions before we bottle a spirit we've blended and aged in our test barrels is deciding what proof will improve it's flavor. That requires some sampling and some experimentation. What you don't want to do is to go too far...

From late August through the end of September, spires of Great Blue Lobelia appear all along the springhouse stream #downonthefarm. The #wildflowers we've planted in the picnic area are mostly in tones of blue or white to match these and other natives that grow here naturally.

One landmark day follows another. THIS day we reached a huge landmark, sealing the first of seven barrels of whiskey Prichard's Distillery has contract distilled for us over the last nine months. We couldn't be more thrilled. Countdown to Engineered Spirits’ bourbon begins now...

Just as we were harvesting the last pawpaws of the year, we also collected the first native persimmons #downonthefarm. We think the cooler temps a few weeks ago tricked some of those trees on the northern exposures of the farm to drop their bounty a little bit earlier than usual.

After we feel like we've aged a spirit long enough in one of our test barrels, we take it out of the barrel and proof it down. These may not be our products, but the important part is practicing all the mathematical calculations required to get these spirits down to 100 proof.

Every year we look forward to the native orchids that grow #downonthefarm, but they go dormant when conditions aren’t ideal. So, we were especially excited to find this Lesser Ladies' Tresses orchid in the picnic area, thirty feet away from where we first identified it in 2023.

Time to make some homemade muscadine wine!

These last few weeks the Northern Spicebush berries have begun to ripen to a bright red #downonthefarm. All parts of this plant are edible, but unripe berries have a different flavor – more like a peppery citrus – than the red ones, which are often compared to allspice or clove.

We're getting enough different fruit now #downonthefarm to expand our experiments. That's why restoring the springhouse was the first critical path step on our distillery journey. We use its water in all our experiments and will continue to use it for all the products we produce.

The bright white petals of native Carolina Elephant's Foot appear along the path to the picnic area #downonthefarm at the beginning of fall. In the Asteraceae family, it lacks the daisy-like appearance of other members of the family because each flower head has only disk flowers.

Independent Stave Company in Kentucky loaded up about 20 new white oak barrels today for us to fill in a couple of weeks. @prichardspirits will then age these spirits for us, until we’re ready to move them to their permanent home #downonthefarm.

Today is a watershed moment for Engineered Spirits. We're in Kentucky, watching the team at Independent Stave Company load up the first new white oak barrels we'll be using to barrel the spirits @prichardspirits has distilled from our corn and our springwater.

These Muscadines were an unexpected gift this week from our late Uncle Ralph. They'd been in the deep freezer #downonthefarm since he gave them to us in 2022. But an unexpected freezer repair meant we had to empty it and, lo and behold, we found these. Thank you, Uncle Ralph.

Before we start a new botanical experiment, we always make sure all of our equipment is clean and sterile. James Moore explains why and what he uses to do it.

Next to Papa's workshop is a band of limestone covered in wildflowers, such as goldenrod, ironweed, passionflower and Beautyberry. The parking lot for the distillery will be beside it, but we plan to keep this wild area for our visitors to enjoy when they visit us #downonthefarm.

When we finish racking our homemade strawberry wine, we use the Brix hydrometer to see how much the alcohol potential had changed compared to when we first put it into the fermenter. Our reading confirms we may have waited a little long to rack it and the wine is on the dry side.

Earlier this week we picked our first native #pawpaws of the year #downonthefarm. We processed the fruit as soon as possible and froze it to use later in a future experiment. After you pick a pawpaw, it will begin to ferment almost immediately. Someday, that might come in handy.

We're finally getting around to racking this strawberry wine. James Moore tells us why we do it.

We haven’t yet racked the strawberry wine we started five weeks ago. That’s a long time to wait, but we have a theory that waiting gives the wine extra time to absorb every bit of flavor and color from the fruit. Now, let's see if we can kick off some additional fermentation.

There are many opinions across the food and beverage industry on whether the term "terroir" can be applied to whiskey in the same way it's applied to a wine. Our latest blog delves into the debate. Can a whiskey claim terroir? You be the judge: tinyurl.com/whiskeyterroir3