Transcript: Distillery 209 (Part 1)

Cocktails on the Fly
Episode: “Distillery 209 (part 1)”

Alberta Straub: Welcome to Distillery 209, yes lets go! Hi, here we are at distillery 209 in San Francisco California. They make great gin here, I am going to ring this bell here and hopefully they will let us inside.
Arnie: Hi Alberta how are you doing, its good to see you.
Alberta Straub: Good to see you!
Arnie: Come on in!
Alberta Straub: Ok well here we are at distillery 209 with Arnie and he is the technical director of distillery 209, Arnie can you tell us what the heck do you do here at 209 distilleries?
Arnie: Well we make a great gin, a world class gin. And it is a gin that is a little different; it has got some history behind it and starts from back in the 1880’s, when the original distillery 209 was founded in Napa Valley.
Alberta Straub: That is really neat.
Arnie: We want to give a little harkens back to the traditions of gin, which is a great spirit that goes back many hundreds of years. So our bottle is designed based around the classic Dutch case gin bottle.
Alberta Straub: These are beautiful bottles too, I want to put it on my vanity it looks gorgeous.
Arnie: And we also wanted to get a spirit though that wasn’t just a traditional Dutch style but a new style of gin. That has great citrus overtones and wonderful back notes of spice and that’s what we are working for here.
Alberta Straub: Well I’ll tell you, you do a great job, because this gin is truly unique, it has a really unique flavor that makes a great cocktail.
Arnie: Thank you; well let’s talk about how we make this gin. So why don’t you go ahead…
Alberta Straub: I will have a little bottle, too take it with me and hold it and love it. So why don’t you show us how this is done.
Arnie: Sure, let’s talk about our neutral spirit that we start with.
Alberta Straub: Wow, look at this place, look at all this amazing equipment. What do you dohere?
Arnie: Well this is where the gin actually starts in the production process. And you may be familiar with that gin is made form grain neutral spirits. And ours are four times distilled, and they come in out of the Midwest, they are corn based. And we like corn because, well corn has got this great sweetness and a little bit of a mouth feel that you really do cherish in the background of your gin.
Alberta Straub: Nice, so you can really taste it too.
Arnie: I really have a great canvas with start with here, in this really, really pure alcohol. And so essentially what we have here is really fine vodka that we are starting with. And to me vodka is just unfinished gin.
Alberta Straub: That’s a great way to put it, defiantly unfinished isn’t it?
Arnie: So the next thing that we do is we want to put this into our still and we want to add some water with it. So we come over to our transfer panel here, and these pumps allow us to measure and pump over to our still exact quantities of alcohol and water for the distillation process.

Alberta Straub: Wow that’s neat.
Arnie: And its very simple, we just match up to wherever we want to head.
Alberta Straub: Just like the kitchen sink?
Arnie: Yep, well al little cleaner probably. And then we throw the valve, turn on the switch and were ready to go.
Alberta Straub: Well, what are all these different openings for?
Arnie: Well, this panel allows us to transfer fluid to any one of the tanks, or anywhere else we wish to in the distillery. So it makes it so myself and Wayne Owens, who is my assistant… can make…
Alberta Straub: And what a great assistant he is.
Arnie: He is a great guy. He and I make all the 209 in the world.
Alberta Straub: Wow that’s amazing, you two, that’s great. So what happens next?
Arnie: Well once we have added our alcohol in, we take our water and transfer that into the still too. Now our water here is very special here in San Francisco, you probably know that. In that it comes from Yosemite national park, its hetch hetchy water. It’s a reservoir up in the mountains, it is basically sierra snowmelt. So when we get the water here in San Francisco we sort of strip out the chemicals that are put in to bring it back to a natural state. And then we add it too our still for the distillation process.

Alberta Straub: Lovely, alright. Well I definitely want to se this distillation process.
Arnie: Well, let’s talk about how gin becomes gin instead of just being vodka.
Alberta Straub: Ok cool.
Arnie: Let’s go to the botanical room next.
Alberta Straub: The botanical room my favorite.
Arnie: Yeah, I know, you love this place.
Alberta Straub: Let’s go! Distillery #209, they make good gin here. So check it out and watch the very exciting part two of our tour.