(DOUG JESSOP’S UTAH SUCCESS STORIES – ABC4 NEWS – SALT LAKE CITY, UT) When you think of Vodka, let’s face it, you usually think of Russia. But maybe you should be thinking about Utah.
South Salt Lake, Utah based, Dented Brick Distillery makes Gin, Whiskey and Rum. What you might know is that they make Vodka as well.
The Managing Partner of Dented Brick, Marc Christensen walked me through the process of making vodka.
Their mascot, a one hundred plus year old stuffed bear, called Pasha came along as well.
Marc opened a bag of with whole grain from the Utah/Idaho border. Their vodka is made with red winter wheat and pumpernickel rye
As walked towards a big silver “mash tank” Marc told me; “We mill it into some flour. We take that flour put it into our mash cook and we add a naturally occurring enzyme and our artesian well water. Yummy stuff. The reason we use artesian well water is that it doesn’t have chlorine, or fluoride or bromine or anything the city waters have that interfere with the fermentation process.”
There is a series of tubes connected to the mash tank that he showed me and continued; “This is two hundred degrees coming out of here. By the time it runs out of there it will be ninety degrees and we can pump it over to the fermentation tanks and start fermentation.”
The fermentation tank is interesting because it has a series of dimples. Marc explained that the dented tanks keep the fermentation at the same temperature all year round.
It’s gone from the mash tank to the fermentation tank. Where does it go next? Pasha pointed the way, and we were off to the heart of the operation, the big copper still and distillation chamber.
“Once fermentation is completed, we have about ten percent alcohol, we’ll have a bunch of water, we’ll have dead yeast cells, we’ve had a bunch of grain residue. We pump that into the distillation chamber, and we’ll run it through our stripping column. It will strip out everything but water and alcohol.”
Their vodka is named Roofraiser Vodka. I asked Marc why. “We ordered our stills from Kentucky two and a half years before we even got the building built. We told the contractor the inside ceiling height had to twenty-eight feet tall. It wasn’t. We had to raise the roof to bring our vodka column in.”
Everyone has a story. I strongly feel that “stories have power”. Chances are that if you are going through something, that someone else probably has as well. The shared experiences we humans have can help each other. That my friend makes the point that stories “help us understand each other.”
You don’t have to agree with everyone, but in my opinion, if people would take more time getting to knowing more about others and where they are coming from, we just might find out that we have more similarities than differences.
You can see my positive business profiles every Sunday in the ABC4 News at 10 p.m. or online at www.ABC4.com/Success
With another Utah Success Story at Dented Brick Distillery, I’m Doug Jessop, ABC4. на ваше здоровье (To Your Health). This story contains sponsored content.
