Craft Distillery Located in downtown Frederick producing vodka, gin and whiskey from organic grains. We spoke to the co-founder Braeden Bumpers about the difficulties and proud moments of running your own distillery.
Braeden, tell us about yourself, your background, what you were doing before you found yourself in the Spirit distillation business.
BB: Tyler and I met at college in North Carolina (although we are both from Maryland) and soon became friends because we were both avid home brewers. We always challenged ourselves to try and out-do the other one with different and newer brews while we were down there. Although we started in brewing, spirits were always our real passion. I have a background in science and Tyler has a background in business but as luck would have it I was working in business development for a start-up down in DC and Tyler was selling and installing Solar Installations when we decided to go for it on starting our own distillery. Long story short six years after we started planning the distillery we finally opened to the public on December 3rd of last year. We both apprenticed under the distillers at Koval Distilling to gain our distilling knowledge.
We know the Koval folks. Their whiskey is extraordinary. What was the vision for Mcclintock Distilling?
BB: We wanted to honor our namesake McClintock Young and really push the boundaries of what can be done in distilling. Our mission is to embrace his spirit of innovation, which is why we do things a little differently here.
Who is involved?
BB: Tyler Hegamyer and I (Braeden Bumpers) started the distillery, are the two head distillers and owners of the company. Right now we are also the only two employees so we do just about everything from production to accounting to sales.
What have been the main challenges involved in setting up a new distillery? And what has been the part you’ve enjoyed most?
BB: As younger distillers, getting our capital to finance the equipment we wanted was definitely a long process. Once we got that together we renovated a 105 year old building, doing as much of the work we could ourselves. The whole renovation took us about 17 months so that was rough, but it made me appreciate the final product that much more.
What exactly does your job entail?
BB: As a distillery made up of two people, my day to day is very different every day. Usually the first half of my day is spent distilling, mashing, bottling or in some other phase of production. The second half of my day is usually sending emails, selling new restaurants, doing admin work or running the tours and tastings at the facility. We usually spend about 12-14 hours a day down here seven days a week. Not that I would ever complain, we absolutely love what we do so time flies down here.
What whiskey expressions do you currently produce, and how are they all different?
BB: We currently only offer our Maryland-Heritage White Whiskey, which is an unaged Rye whiskey. Usually Rye whiskeys are around 51-60% rye, but we honor the distilling traditions of Western Maryland and use a 75% rye mash bill. We are also one of two distilleries in the country (that I know of) that use a stone burr mill to grind all of our grains in house and use 100% organic ingredients. All of these play into the unique flavor we get our of our white whiskey, which can be found here. We are also barrel aging a traditional Rye Whiskey and a Rye-forward Bourbon Whiskey.
Apart from the weather (if relevant), why did you set up a distillery in Maryland?
BB: Well we are both originally born and raised here so we wanted to join the movement of bringing craft spirits back to the state. Maryland has a long tradition of distilling (especially in Rye Whiskeys) and were one of the power houses of distilling prior to prohibition. We wanted to use traditional milling and mashing techniques to honor our heritage, while putting a modern take on the distillation methods we use.
What three words do you want people to associate with your whiskey?
BB: Organic, premium, hand-crafted.
What are the most important factors affecting whisky distillation? How do you ensure that these are carefully balanced to produce a consistently high quality product?
BB: The biggest factor that sets our distillery apart is probably our milling methods. We have someone on the floor for the entire mill to ensure that we are getting consistent flour and the temperature of the grains aren’t getting too hot. We also just designed and built an automated cooling system to feed our fermentation tanks so we get consistent and desirable results.
Do you think that your product is distinctive? If so, what makes it distinctive from other whiskies on the market?
BB: I think the stone milling gives our whiskey a very distinct flavor. You get a good amount of natural sweetness from milling the grain at a lower temperature that balances the pepperiness of the rye nicely. We also distill our white whiskey a little cleaner than most of the others on the market and everything is done on our copper pot still so you get a clean finish without getting too moonshine heavy.
What is in the pipeline for 2017 that we should look out for?
BB: Our next big release that we are very excited for will be our Cognac-Finished Gin that will be coming out later this summer. We are lightly barrel aging our award-winning gin in used Cognac Barrels, sourced from the Hennessy distillery. We are excited to have that fruit forward note and light wood tannen flavors mixed with our Gin. We also are looking forward to releasing our first Bourbons and Ryes sometime in the winter of this year.
That sounds delicious. I wish we could try that one day. Do you have any role models in this industry?
BB: We have a lot of respect for the St. George Guys. They really have done so much for our industry and I love the spirits they are putting out there. Same goes for Corsair.
Anything else you’d like to share with our readers?
BB: Our biggest goal when we have tours down here is to share our craft and our passion with people. You do the same thing with Taste the Dram. I try to tell anyone who comes down here (and would ask the same of your readers) that it doesn’t matter if you are buying our spirits but please buy it from a small batch producer. Not just in spirits but in beer, wine, food really anything. It makes such a big difference for the little guys and it really is a wonderful thing to support local and hand-crafted tradesmen.
Thank you for having me on.
