CRAFT SPIRITS FROM SPIRITED CRAFTSMEN

OUR STORY

It started in 2015 with three lifelong friends, a round of job layoffs, a 100-year-old building, and a stubborn dream of making great whiskey with locally grown grain.

Rob, Jake, and Pat have been friends since junior high. Over the years they each went a different direction — Rob became a chef, moonshiner, and biodiesel expert; Jake earned his master’s in Sustainable Design; Pat worked in insurance by day and tended bar by night. They came back together over a shared love of fine spirits, and 10,000 Drops was born.

The next three years were spent gutting and restoring the four-story Peterson Art Furniture building — soft blasting walls, pulling what felt like a million nails, and re-purposing as much of the building as possible. Old flooring became the ceiling. Old sprinkler pipe became the railings. Old windows became a two-story feature wall. Floor joists became the bar, countertops, and merchandise area. In the spring of 2018, we fired up the still for the first time.

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OUR VISION

10,000 Drops was built around one singular goal: make the finest quality craft spirits, full stop. That meant doing the homework — touring distilleries across the country, making multiple trips to Moonshine University in Kentucky, and building relationships across the industry. Three years of learning, building, and obsessing over craft. We fired up the still in spring 2018 and haven’t looked back.

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OUR PROCESS

In order to make great whiskey you need great grain so, thankfully, we are proud to partner with the amazing folks at Crosswinds Farm - an organic farm that uses regenerative agricultural processes to make amazing corn and wheat while also improving the quality of their soil. Once we receive this amazing grain, we mill, mash, ferment, distill and age our products using time-tested and sustainable methods at our facility in Faribault. All byproducts from fermentation and distillation, including spent grain and rum wash, are then sent back to Crosswinds for use on their farm as organic fertilizer and foliar spray.

Use only the best ingredients - Never cut corners - Guided by flavor

Bourbon resting in 53 gal barrel on the top floor of our distillery.
Organic corn from our friends at Crosswinds Fram, Kenyon MN.
We begin the process by milling corn directly into our cooking vessel.
The corn, wheat and barley fall directly from our mill into the cooker below, beginning the process of making bourbon.
Blackstrap Molasses and cane sugar are used to make Rum.
We pump the cooked mash into our fermenters with the grain still in solution.
Special yeasts are added to convert the sugars to alcohol over a 3 day fermentation process.
Once fermented, the mash is pumped into the still where it is heated to boiling and the alcohol (low wines) are extracted in a striping run.
Once all of the alcohol is extracted from the mash it is pumped back out and picked up by Corsswinds farm for use as compost and high protein animal feed.
After all three fermented are striped into low wines, they are added back into the still for the most important step.
In the spirit run, we are separating out the different types of alcohol from the low wines, and cleaning up the spirit to become its base spirit.
Rob is inspecting the spirit run on our pot-column hybrid still made by Vendome in Kentucky.
Throughout this stage the spirit is sampled and tasted to ensure consistency.
The final product then will be either proofed down and bottled or fed into a new charred oak barrel to become bourbon.
A 53 gallon white oak barrel getting prepped to receive new un-aged bourbon.
We use a gravity siphon to fill the barrels from the mezzanine level.
The full barrel is rolled onto our freight elevator and takes a ride to its resting place on the top floor of our building.
Up here the barrels will rest for 4-8 years and the natural temperature cycles will do their magic, expanding and contracting the liquid in the barrels.
After a long rest, the bourbon, rum or gin is removed from the barrel and sampled to determine the best proof to release each barrel. Then it's bottled, waxed, and ready to be enjoyed!
From farm, to grain, to mash, to compost, to spirit, to barrel, to bottle. Every step in our process is intentional, sustainable, and geared towards making only the finest quality spirits.