ORIGIN STORY

“Cold distillation is the tool that allows us to color outside the flavor and category lines.  It’s like painting with a palette most distillers don’t have access to.”

Skeptic was born of a pursuit for cleaner, fresher flavors in spirits.  While it started as a dream to start a craft brewery, along the way something remarkable happened.  One day, Karl, the founder, had the thought to try distilling one of his craft beers under vacuum at cold temperatures.  So he tried it, and the results were nothing short of a revelation. The clear liquid dripping out of the condenser smelled and tasted almost exactly like the beer it was born from, a mango habanero double IPA, and it was remarkably smooth, even for 126 proof.  In this moment, the gates of flavor possibilities in distilled spirits opened up to Karl and the potential became limitless.

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The journey from revelation to functional distillery was not easy though.  This was a completely different way of distilling spirits from what everybody else was doing.  With minimal guidance or experience, Karl needed to design and build the still himself.  And with even less money to work with, he had to be resourceful.  A chance listing on eBay of an assortment of stainless sanitary piping and fittings decommissioned from a Caterpillar plant was purchased for about $1200.00, and this contained about 90% of the parts needed to build the production still. The rest was purchased new or used and/or fabricated from scratch.  

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So how do we fuse the technical aspects with the creative art of flavor development in order to produce some of the freshest tasting spirits available?

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With a background in brewing, Karl's interests are in creating uniquely approachable flavors.  Our goal isn't to create something weird for weirdness' sake, but something weirdly unexpected.  Something different that you didn't know you could love so much and want to drink it again and again, or experiment with to create truly unique cocktails.  Yes, we make some experimentally odd stuff too, but our goal is to create new flavor experiences and evoke emotions in unexpected ways.

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Fresh Flavor. Distilled & Bottled.