The wait is over: Our doors have finally been opened! Here’s a look at our first few exhilarating days, a glimpse of many more to come.
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We invite you to visit us Wednesday through Sunday, to taste our new spirits and pick up a bottle to enjoy at home. |
As the weather breaks we have one thing on our minds – foraging for new ingredients! This time we’re on a hunt for fragrant Balsam Poplar buds.
With few budding trees in Tamworth, we grabbed an axe and made our way up to Coos County to meet with UNH Forester Brendan Prusik and Agricultural Educator Steve Turaj. With their help, we collected a hefty supply of plump buds, allowing for a piece of New Hampshire in every bottle.
Maybe it’s because we’ve got a thing for booze, but to us, a lawn full of dandelions means a belly full of wine.
We took advantage of the vibrant florets sprouting up in New Hampshire and starting plucking our way to a batch of homemade Dandelion wine. Like most wine, each batch takes time to fully develop, but there’s nothing like a sweet glass of spring in the dead of winter. Here’s how it’s done!
Recipe:
1 gallon freshly picked dandelions
1 gallon water
2 pounds raw sugar
1 pound organic golden raisins
2 organic lemons
2 organic oranges
1 packet wine yeast
1. Collect the blossoms when they are fully open on a sunny day. Remove any green sepals as they will impair fermentation.
2. Prepare the oranges and the lemon. Juice citrus fruits and set aside. Cut remaining rinds into thin strips to minimize the amount of white pith added to the brew.
3. Add peels, juice, dandelion petals, raisins, & sugar into a large crock. Pour 1 gallon of boiled water over ingredients and steep for 3 days.
4. Strain the liquid through a cheesecloth until all solids are removed and pour into a large fermenting vessel with an airlock. Add yeast and seal.
5. When the mixture has stopped bubbling (about 2 weeks) fermentation is complete. Siphon wine to remove lees (sediment) and pour into sterilized wine bottles. Cork and store in a cool, dark place for at least 6 months.
Spring is just around the corner, but Tamworth is just as beautiful when the town is blanketed in snow. Whether you’re on foot or cross-country skiing, there are just a few more weeks left to go out and take it all in.
It’s about time we sprinkled a little more rye into the pot to get our first batches of rye whiskey cooking.
By law, rye’s mash must consist of at least 51% rye. The additional rye adds a particular spice and dryness to the flavor, while corn adds sweetness, and barley drives the fermentation process.
To conjure up the past we’ve petitioned the future: a state-of-the-art 250 gallon custom-made copper still with a Scotch-style brandy helmet, a whisky column, a gin basket, four fermenters, six holding tanks, a hot water reclaiming system, a mash cooker…well we don’t want to give away all of our secrets but you get the idea!
The wide range of gear allows us to be many things at once: a Test Kitchen, a whiskey distiller, an Applejack fermenter, a maker of small-batch gins, eau du vies, and spirits hitherto unknown.
The visionary poet William Blake once wrote “what is now proved was once imagined.” When it comes to possibility of future spirits, the limits of our Test Kitchen and our own imaginations know no bounds.
It’s true that many of us may fit the bill of a “whiskey thief”, but in the distilling world it’s actually the name of a very useful tool. A whiskey thief is a long cylinder used to extract small portions of spirits from aging barrels for sampling and quality control. Many of our first batches have been aging since Fall of 2014, so we decided to check steal a sample to ensure the liquid was on it’s way to becoming a delicious spirit.
Here is a first look at Tamworth Distilling spirits wearing a beautiful new golden hue.
Well before Americans were distilling rye and bourbon, we were looking to our apple trees for a stiff boozy drink. With bountiful apple harvests in the Northeast, the sweet fruits were barreled and transformed into apple brandy, a well-rounded spirit that embodied autumn.
We decided to take the challenge by working to create an apple brandy that reflects the spirit of Tamworth, New Hampshire. We experimented with freshly picked local apples ranging from sweet Macintosh and Northern Spy to tart varieties like Delicious and Gravensteins.
After countless trials on the rotary evaporator, we moved into the distillery room where we’re now sealing our 11th batch of apple brandy composed of New Hampshire Macintosh and Cortland Apples.
There is an art to everything – In the unconventional ways in which we distill spirits, the culinary and flavor investigations in the test kitchen, and now in the creation of our bottle.
We made our way down the road to local artist Peter VanderLaan’s glass studio to watch as he transformed a bit of molten glass into a beautiful vessel for spirits. The process was done entirely by hand and took nearly an hour, making each bottle a true work of art. Great spirits deserve a great bottle.
What was once an old barn is now home to our aging spirits! Take a look inside the Tamworth Distilling Barrelhouse, where our whiskeys develop their flavors, color, and character.