Kings County Distillery (FRONT)

The Distillery I visited is Kings County Distillery located in 299 Sands St, Brooklyn, New York 11201. Kings County Distillery is highly known for operating whiskey distillery such as corn whiskey and bourbon whiskey. It is NYC’s first legal distillery since Prohibition. Kings County began as the smallest commercial distillery in the county and was first located on a small 325 square foot room in East Williamsburg. It had five 24-liter stainless steel stills making whiskey continuously. In 2012, the distillery moved into the Paymaster Building in the historic Brooklyn Navy Yard, just a few miles away from the Brooklyn Whiskey Wats of the 1860s and the former distillery district waterfront. It was a tremendously am informative 1 hour tour and a half. My tour guide Evan was extremely knowledgeable about distillation and super friendly. He talked a lot about the history and process of making Whiskey in Kings County Distillery. I learned plenty about both the history and craft process, and really enjoyed the tasting. They make handmade moonshine, bourbon, and other whiskeys alongside with experimenting different flavor whiskey. Sometime their experimented whiskey come as a failure but they continue to try to make a new creation. A few of their popular creations they are are honey moonshine, grapefruit jalapeno moonshine, chocolate whiskey, and etc. Below are some of their whiskeys products and price list.

Evan brought us to the main distillery floor where all the whiskeys gets made. The main ingredient in making whiskey is grain especially malted barley grain which has a smokey rubbery characteristic.  Their main product bourbon need to be 51% corn by law so they are 70% corn. They have their corn and grains straight from the farm, lakeview organic grain which is a farm in upstate New York. The first step is in their cooker that boils/cooks the corn and grains and liquefy it. Then they have a separator to separate all the grain and liquid. The liquid goes a tank which then pumps it into their fermenters. They sprinkle yeast all over the fermenters and leave it for about two to four days to ferment.

Fermentation

Evan also emphasize that fermentation process is similar to how beer gets fermented just that for distilling, it involves removing the carbon dioxide. Once it is ready, the liquid gets pumped into stills. The stills they use are true pot stills.  

It cooks it on one side of the stills and turns into steam. There is a black pipe that compressed steam. That’s the heat source that goes into a coil, a stainless steel coil inside the still. It boils the steam to vapor and travels into a condenser and then can see the whiskey coming right out of the stone. They consider it as double distilling. One advantages of their pot stills is that it gives a really rich textural flavor. After one distillation, they will reduce a thousand liters of wash or distillers beer down to about six percent alcohol down to about 600 liters at forty percent alcohol.  They will have someone taste and smell the spirit and make sure it is the right consistency and flavor.

The last and longest step in the process is storing the spirits. Evan brought us to where they stored it in barrels. They have approximately 2,400 barrels. Their shorter age barrels are in the center of the room and larger one near the windows. Their whiskey bourbon has to be aged in a charred new oak barrel so they have smaller barrels with char three on the inside. Their rye whiskey is aged in the smaller barrels. Usually the smallest size barrel tends to be more for the experimental whiskeys like oatmeal whiskey.

Tasting

At the end of the tour, Evan offered tasting of their whiskey. It started off with a sample of moonshine. Moonshine has the most high-proof distilled spirit. It has NOT ever been barreled so it had high alcohol content. It was extremely hard to consume and strong. The second sample I had was spiced whiskey. It had a fusion of 7 spices which is pepper, cinnamon, star anish, all spices, caradamom, nutmeg, and cloves. It had a spicy cinnamon kick to it. The remaining whiskey I tried was straight bourbon whiskey, peated bourbon, and chocolate flavored whiskey. My personal favorite was the chocolate flavored whiskey. They infused their moonshine with ground cacao beans from Mast Brothers Chocolate, a factory nearby. It had a hint of bitterness and tasted like dark chocolate. I really enjoyed it!

Chocolate Flavored Whiskey