These days, craft beer seems to be on everyone’s minds, and lips for that matter. But two local techies are looking to bring hard liquor into the craft fray. Andrew Newby and Lukas Kummer of AVATAR (a local web development company) are dipping their toes into the booze game with their start-up distillery, Toledo Spirits Co. And though they’re just getting past the embryonic stages, they’re poised and ready to start growing a grass roots campaign to take back the top shelf from giant liquor corporations and start filling the Glass City with their concoctions. Though I couldn’t drink on a work lunch, they were kind enough to sit down and shed some light on the upcoming project.
Where did the idea for the distillery come from? And how did you two end up starting it together? so do you guys have a raison d'être that you operate under?
Lukas: We want to approach distilling like craft brewing. We want to be able to do what craft brewers do, in that they play with mash builds, they play with different malts. Not just producing a single malt, not all two row or all six row, but doing a honey malt, doing a munich malt and really playing with different ideas. Or if we do a bourbon, figuring out what those small grains are and playing with the flavor profiles the same way a brewer plays with the flavor profiles.
We don’t want to do the same old same old. We want to approach things like a brewery. So that we are able to do small releases, seasonal releases and so we can source things from local growers and producers to get our ingredients.
Andrew: When you think of about what drives a small brewery, microbrewery, or even a nano brewery, it’s the same thing that drives a chef. What can they get that’s local to them? Where can they take it and what can they do with that thats a little bit different? Maybe all their ingredients are exactly the same as somebody else uses, but they are able to put them together in a different way or process them in a different way.
Even now we have several micro breweries that are really close to each other that are using a lot of the similar stuff but what are they doing that is different. We are going to approach the same way with distilling, especially focusing on things that naturally have a lot of ingredients in them like whiskey, gin, absinthe, etc.
Are you hitting the ground running with a few formulas that are tried and true? Do you have like a flagship product or is it more where going to get in the lab figure out what works?
A: It’s really all of the above. We’re trying to balance out our time a little bit, we have some good core stuff just to get some exposure, but then some stuff that is going to be a little different that people haven’t seen before. Again, very small batch stuff. Gotta get people use to it.
L: Right, We’re working with Black Swamp and Elevator, we’re sort of going back and forth between them. They use bourbon barrels to age their beer, the beer soaks into the barrel. And depending on what beer went into the barrel, we can put bourbon back in to get some of that maltiness and hoppiness out and it produces and exceptionally smooth product.
Some of the most sought after beers out right now are bourbon barrel aged.
L: Yea, exactly
A: Now we are taking that and turning it around. Were going from a beer barrel back into a bourbon.
Do you have names for this stuff?
A: That one is Nut Brown Bourbon, because the beer that it has been aged in this particular one is nut brown ale.
Do you have a location?
L: We’re out on Summit St. We’ve got a production facility, we have our federal permits, Ohio permits, we got inspected and we passed our inspection.
So all the hard stuff is done?
L: Yea, all the paperwork is done.
A: It has been a long process we've been working on since June of 2013. It took those 8 months to go through not only figuring out the ins and outs of everything, but to actually go through licensing and buy the equipment. Which is really untraditional when you think about most businesses, where you can basically put a sign out front and you’re open.
How was this idea born between the two of you?
A: I will say like all great ideas its was born out of whiskey.
[Laughs] Alright, so whats your background in distilling?
L: I home brewed a lot and I’ve always liked whiskey. And its been one of those things where I kinda figured out that making whiskey was something I wanted to try. We took appropriate courses, we went to workshops, etc.
So between working together at Avatar and being drinking buddies it just worked out this way?
A: Absolutely, we have a couple other partners and a lot of the motivation is similar, where its kind of a complex product. Not only do you have to think about the actual technical process of starting from a beer and going to a whiskey, but you have to come up with where the ingredients are coming from, think about the sales aspect of it, there are a lot of ins and outs that come through. And each of us from a partnership perspective really like that level of complexity. It has become something that is fairly easy to get into, because there are so many different aspects to it. Even if you don’t like whiskey the whole challenge of putting it together is still exciting.
What is the motivation to keep it here in town? Wouldn’t a community with a stronger economy be more economically viable to launch a company like this?
A: Our motto is, “You’ll drink better in Toledo.” And as Toledoans, as people that love Toledo and Toledoans, being able to produce a product here start to finish is an honor. We like to think what were people in Toledo doing 100 years ago? And with Toledo Spirits, what will Toledo be doing 100 years from now? We’re going to be able to produce fantastic whiskey.
Not only do we have resources from the personnel perspective but we have the perfect natural resources for making whiskey. Toledo has 3 things in its history: water, grain and glass, which are the three biggest things you need to have a good drink. Toledo makes perfect sense. There were a ton of distilleries downtown 100 years ago, and the idea of being able to bring that back is fantastic.
It seems like the perfect time too. Crafts have never been more sought after not only in this region, but in this country then they are right now.
A: It’s all driven by the foodie movement, by the DIY movement, it’s driven by people not only being interested in things that are delicious (we’ve always liked that) but where things are being made sustainably. So whether you're going to one of the fairs like Maker's Mart or going down to the farmer’s market, it still plays up in what we are doing with the distillery.
Lets talk about the facility. Is it just going to be strictly for distilling or will there be a little restaurant in there? What does distribution look like initially, how big of a run are you thinking?
A: Starting off we will have a tasting room, so you will be able to come in and do tasting and buy products. But our initial focus will be focusing on the local market, working with local bars and restaurants on doing special releases at those special locations and trying to really build up our chops a little bit through the local market.
Considering local sustainability, is there any outsourcing that needs to be done?
A: There is always going to be some stuff you're going to have to get from outside the state. Yeast is a good example of that, where that's going to be coming from California, there is no or very little chance that it will be coming from Ohio. However, it really is about that localvore perspective looking at what's available and saying ‘Now what can we turn that into?’
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You mentioned a Kickstarter campaign, do know what some of the incentives for that will be?
A: We are definitely going to do the basics—sticker, t-shirt that type of stuff. But we really want to make the Kickstarter campaign about getting individuals that really want to be involved with the distillery a part of our immediate network. We have a group we are calling the round table who will get access to early releases, special tastings, having a little bit of a more private dialogue with us as we go along not only the creation process, but thinking about what we are producing and talking about it. So there are going to be some pieces like that that will be more than just donate 100 bucks and get a cool shirt! But it’s going to be about working together and talking more. There’s going to be a level for our release party where you will only get an invite by joining through our Kickstarter campaign. There will be higher levels that are really about learning about the distillation process thats coming in and spending a couple days with us making a product and then coming back six years later and getting to bottle and name it. We really like to think of this as starting our community within the organization.
Do you have a tentative start date when you think people will start seeing you around town or is it still up in the air?.png)
L: We still have label and formula approval, and it’s looking like 45 days-ish for the vodka. It’s a strawberry vodka, still working on the name. There will be approximately a pound of strawberries going into each bottle. The other thing we’re excited about is the WTF (Whiskey Tango Foxtrot) which is whiskey distilled from beer, from all ohio microbreweries. It’ll probably be a distillery-only product since it will be so many small batches.
We’re rolling out 4 styles of bitters that are available through our website, and hopefully some other venues soon, like beer and wine shops. It’s a matter of scaling up. There’s the Black Kite Coffee Bitters, Lemons In the Attic (lemon and cardamom), Esprit De La Maison (anise and orange), and Hopped Up On (hops and citrus).
When do you think people will be able to visit the distillery?
L: Probably around the same time that we finish the vodka, but I’d really like to see people coming in before that. Like Andrew said earlier it’s all about building a community.
Though the Kickstarter campaign is still TBA, check them out on facebook at facebook.com/toledospirits or their site Toledospirits.com to stay up to date!
