Doing Things The Hard Way.
Spirits are shelf-stable and starting a distillery is capital intensive; from the equipment required to distill, to the time in barrels (we do a two-year minimum). Some brands, to make those beginning stages easier, bring in NGS (neutral grain spirit aka bulk vodka) and factory-made whiskey and bottle or redistill to sell as their own. We DON’T do that. There are a lot of business models out there and we don’t bash on the other models as long as deception is not part of the game. We just want you to know that our business model is to make everything in-house from start to finish. That is where our #everydamndrop comes from. So you can be at ease knowing what you’re sipping was made from scratch at the Block Building.
Taking Raw Ingredients.
Great grain makes great spirits and great dirt makes great grain. Understanding the processes behind our ingredients helps us tailor our methods to create the best spirits possible. We have the incredible opportunity to work directly with a farming family in Missouri to pick the grain varieties, farming style, cover crop, etc. to populate the 720 acres used to grow 70% of the grain that The Block uses. That means we choose which grains to grow, which fertilizers to use, and how it gets harvested. We choose what goes into our spirits from the first seed of grain. The other 30% comes from Colorado farms and malt houses. Those ingredients and the practices used to grow & harvest them before arriving at the distillery are integral in the flavors of the spirits that fill our bottles.
Creating Artful, unapologetic spirits.
We do this because we love spirits. But we don’t want to just try and create a replica of what is already out there. We want to push boundaries and explore flavor profiles. When we started we knew we wanted to make a family of spirits. Un-aged spirits like vodka, gin, and liqueurs need a base spirit. So we made a three-grain, oat, wheat, and malted barley vodka that is only distilled once. The botanical recipe for standard gin only requires juniper, leaving the rest of the recipe up to the distiller. How in the world could we decide on just ONE recipe? So we made a family of gins with each having a flavor profile intended to be a representation of the different seasons. Bourbon, rye, and single malt are the most common whiskies on the market. We decided to make a Four Grain Straight Whiskey from oats, wheat, rye, and malted barley. It has some spice like a rye, some sweetness like a single malt, and softness like a wheat but comes in with a crazy earthy/creamy punch from the oats. It also just received a Silver Medal at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition! Our Bourbon will also venture outside the norm of being yellow corn heavy but then having adjuncts of wheat or rye. It will instead feature red, blue, and yellow corn with an adjunct of millet and malted barley.
“Watching people that seemingly have little in common from wildly different backgrounds come in, sit down, and bond over a good drink is one of the biggest compliments we could ever receive.”
— Kraig Weaver, Co-Founder, Co-Head Distiller
So here’s to assembling a community.
There’s an amazing bar scene in Lost in Translation where Bill Murray is already imbibing in a glass of Scotch. Scarlett Johansson walks up to take a seat. The server asks what she would like, Murray pitches Scotch, giving an incredible commercial style pitch and… she orders a vodka tonic. They are two people from completely different worlds that happen to end up sitting next to each other and bonding while enjoying their favorite spirits/drinks. That is one of the huge motivations and rewards for us building The Block. Watching others that seemingly have little in common come in, sit down, and bond over a good drink is one of the biggest compliments we could ever receive. We have met so many amazing people, artists, brewers, coffee makers, actual priests!, and look forward to meeting many more and adding them to our Block Community.
