February Feels
February 2025
Chugging along into the New Year, we’ll be continuing our deep dive into a decade of Branchwater. This issue will focus on the distillery - equipment, personalities and fun facts and features
Willy Wonka’s Playground
When most people visit us for the first time, there is oohing and aahing over the pot stills that are at the core of the work we do at the distillery. They are impressive - beautiful as well as functional - and we are honored to have them. But before we can dive into the stills, we need to talk about Hans.
Hans
Many of our industry friends already know who Hans Reisetbauer is and what a bottle of Reisetbauer eau-de-vie represents in the world of spirits. It is much easier for us to frame what we do at Branchwater through that lens, as Hans is our consultant, and his products are the bar of excellence we have set for our own spirits.
But for many first-time visitors to the distillery, Hans Reisetbauer and eau-de-vie are foreign words and concepts. So, with the help of Valerie Kathawala, who graciously contributed much of the text for our website, here’s a brief intro to Hans:
Hans Reisetbauer has been a good friend of Kevin’s for more than 20 years. His distillery, in the Austrian countryside just west of Linz, is steeped in the tradition of orchardry. Hans himself is obsessed with rendering the fruits of the surrounding landscape as the highest quality spirits. He started designing stills in 1994. Although he studied mechanical engineering, he has no specific training in this area and is entirely self-taught. His uncompromising standards and willingness to try everything in pursuit of perfection have earned him respect around the world. In his quest, he has famously distilled asparagus, tomatoes, and carrots, as well as perfected eau de vie from more traditional plums, pears, berries, and grains. Hans has invested decades in refining the calculations of time and temperature for each ingredient and vintage condition, every stage of fermentation and distillation. (His notes on these things run to 5,000 pages.) When Kevin told Hans he wanted to try the same thing here, Hans not only gave his full support but also had the extraordinary patience to wait for seven years to get it all going. We are the only spirits producer in the U.S. he has chosen to work with. His faith in us is a huge honor.
Now back to the shiny stuff…
When it came time to design the distillery, we knew we needed a streamlined system that could be operated by just one person since there are only two of us here running the farm. What we came up with is a completely seamless, fully integrated design that takes all of our needs and local conditions into account.
At the heart of our distillery are two steam-powered, hand built 330-liter copper pot stills from Germany’s oldest distillery fabricator, Christian Carl. Hans designed and used these stills for years himself before moving up to bigger ones.
Originally, we had planned on one 450-liter pot still, and we were going to plumb the building for a second one for future growth. But in a conversation in late 2019 with Hans, he mentioned that he was decommissioning two of his stills because they were too small for his operation. Kevin inquired if we could possibly buy one from him so that we could start with two straight away. The issue was that Reisetbauer’s distillery is powered by electricity and ours is powered by steam. We had already encountered complications in getting 480 volts, 60 hz and three-phase power to the barn to run the motors on the pumps and the agitators for the mash tun, fermentation tanks and the distillery, and we knew it wouldn’t be possible to power the heating of the distillery with electricity. So, the idea was abandoned on our side, but it got Hans to thinking and in January 2020, he came back with an idea. He would trade in his two 330-liter distilleries to Christian Carl, who would then retrofit them for steam use at Branchwater. This gave us the chance to start with two pot stills instead of one, and it gives us more flexibility in how we distill.
The pot stills arrived in August 2020, in the middle of COVID lockdown and they did not come with instructions or assembly plans (kind of like IKEA furniture, but a little more expensive and with a lot more at stake!) We had to figure it out on our own. Thanks to our good friends Chuck, Allison, and Charlie Cook we were able to get most of it assembled in one weekend. It took some creative rigging and extensive use of pallet jacks and crow bars to make every pipe fit.
Fermentation First
While the pot stills seem to get most of the attention, the quality of the finished distillate starts with the quality of the fruit and grains, and how they are fermented. We hand-sort each pear and apple before they are grinded and pumped into the fermentation tanks. We are looking for bruising and small cuts in the skin of the fruit. Bruising can lead to core mold, and the cuts are havens for fruit flies where they can lay their eggs. As their larvae hatch, they burrow into the fruit, creating vinegar as they eat the pomace. This vinegar can grow in the alcoholic fermentation as the bacteria acetobacter ferments ethanol into acetic acid, the primary component of vinegar. When vinegar is present, it cannot be hidden through distillation, so fruit selection is a key component to quality.
Fermentation temperatures are also crucial for quality, and we maintain the optimal temperatures with cooling jackets on the fermentation tanks. These jackets circulate glycol to keep the fermentations from getting too hot. This is especially important for fruit ferments, as delicate aromas can be lost or converted to other aromas if the temperatures get too warm.
Time and Temperature
Finally, the way we distill is different than most. Everything at Branchwater is distilled to above 160 Proof (80% ABV). A good way to think of what we do is to think of us an eau-de-vie producer, but some of the distillates are fruits and some are grains. Fruit brandies have an average alcohol of 84.5-85.5% after the second distillation before aging in steel or oak (apple only). The wheat for gin is distilled to between 83.5-84.5% after the second run, watered down for the botanical maceration and then distilled again with the botanicals back up to 84%. Whiskeys are distilled to between 83-84% after the second run and watered down to 70-72 for aging in new American oak.
Once the second distillation is complete, the tail (the ethanol remaining in the pots) is dumped and not blended back into the low wine as most distillers do. What this also means is that we are outside the limits of what the Treasury Department defines for types of alcohol and classes of alcohol. So, even though our rye is aged for over two years, we are not allowed to the use the term “Straight Rye Whiskey,” because the definition for that type is to be distilled below 160 proof, put into new American oak barrels at 62.5% ABV and aged for two years or more. We could not use the term “Bourbon Whiskey” either—even if we made a corn distillate—for the same reason: we distill only the high proof alcohol and dump the rest. In short, we are looking for purity of flavor which, in our view, can only be achieved by distilling at a high level without the tail—the way the best eaux-de-vie are made.
This also means that our yields are much lower than most distilleries. For example, we processed 9,600 lbs. of Bartlett pears from the 2024 harvest, which yielded roughly 220 liters of alcohol. That translates to 43 lbs. of pears per liter. 5,000 lbs. of English Morello cherries yielded only 90 liters, so 55 lbs. of cherries per liter of alcohol. 5,000 lbs. of black currants produced 600 x 375 ml bottles, meaning 8.3 lbs. of black currants for every half bottle of eau-de-vie.
Fruits like black currants and raspberries are naturally low in fructose. We do not chaptalize our fruit brandies (add cane sugar to the mash), so the only alcohol that is produced comes from the naturally occurring sugars in the fruit. These sugars are fermented and then distilled. The first distillation is typically hot and fast: grains reach 38-42% and fruits 30-34%. The second distillation is low and very slow. The head cut is made first. This removes the toxic methanol alcohol and other impurities like acetaldehyde and acetone. Then we collect the heart and dump the tail.
Our distillery is unique in that it has a second reflux helmet which we use for low-fructose fruits like currants. This is a patented design by Hans, which—when opened—gives us two pre-condensers in the line before the condenser. It also helps produce 1-2% more alcohol, which is a bonus when working with low-fructose fruits, or fruit from a rainy growing season.
Worth Its Weight in Water
As mentioned in this post, we distill only at a high level of alcohol. We then age the clear spirits in steel and the brown spirits in oak (oak is what makes them brown), but when it comes time to bottle, we need to proof the spirits down to level that is both expressive and smooth. This means adding water, and when you start with ABVs in the mid-80s and need to come down to 41% or 43%, it means that roughly half the volume in the bottle of our finished spirits is pure water. Without the best quality water, a spirit made in the manner we make ours could be ruined during the proofing process.
Our water source is our farm well, and we are grateful to live in a place with an abundance of ground water, but our water must be processed and purified to very high standards in order to be used in cutting our spirits. The process is also very slow, because we chill the spirit to below freezing and then add water over two to three days, mixing the entire time. We’ve repurposed an old milk tank that we purchased from a local dairy for this purpose, and it works perfectly. Given that our farm was once a dairy farm, it also seems fitting, and, yes, this was also an idea from Hans Reisetbauer, as he proofs his spirits the same way.
What We’ve Been Up To Lately
The slower months are an opportunity for us to get caught up on the production side of things. We’ve been busy labeling Gin and are getting ready to bottle more Rye and the 2023 Bartlett Pear Brandy (yuuuuum!), as well as our debut Vermouths (exciting!)
Speaking of Vermouths…
CHANGE OF DATE
For those of you who had earmarked Feb 22nd, we need to reschedule the Vermouth release party - hopefully to sometime in March. Sorry about that, but an entire section of hell is dedicated to label approvals for registering alcoholic beverages! We hope to have this administrative headache worked out soon so we can mix up some Branch-tinis and Branch-hattans for you!
We’ll post the new date on our IG stories and will share in our next post so stay tuned and thanks to all you vermouth lovers out there who have been asking for updates on this. We’re almost there!
Like the label? The crest is a family seal from Kevin’s great great great grandfather, Ernst Zündt (b. 1819 in Württemberg). We wanted to create something a little different for the vermouths, while incorporating family history. We scanned a photo of the heraldic crest which hangs in our home and our friend Hayley (who does all of our graphics) came up with this design. We can’t wait to share them with you!
We came out of hibernation on Jan 18th to host a tour and tasting for community members organized by Dirty Gaia, an amazing local organization that works to promote earth stewardship through programs that inform, build skills and inspire communities in the Hudson Valley. Check out their upcoming programs here
What we’ve been mixing up lately
We’re big fans of sherry and love how this cocktail (another creation by our friend Ryan) marries the brininess of Manzanilla with the botanicals in our gin. The Dolin Blanc frames it and gives it some heft. This is a cold weather gin cocktail. Pairs well with an evening of knitting, playing backgammon and/or sitting by the fire with a cat on your lap. Cheers!
Molly Bigmouth
2oz Branchwater Gin
0.75oz Manzanilla Sherry
0.5oz Dolin Blanc
Stir with ice, strain into a chilled cocktail glass, and garnish with a lemon twist.
Looking ahead…
We will be in hibernation / planning mode until late March/early April. Keep an eye on our IG stories and our website for updates in the meantime.
Hope you are all taking a cue from nature and doing some wintering too!