Woody Creek Distillery: Crafting Truly Local Spirits

Woody Creek Distillers' whiskey, bourbon, gin and vodka

Potatoes may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think about Colorado, but back in the 1920s there were more potatoes grown in the Roaring Fork Valley in Colorado than there were in Idaho. Potatoes are still a big thing in the area today, which prompted Woody Creek Distillery founders Mary and Pat Scanlan and Mark Kleckner to build a facility that would produce potato vodka, and the brand’s portfolio has expanded to include rye whiskey, Bourbon whiskey, and gin.

History of Woody Creek Distillery

Master Distiller David Matthews with the still — Distiller David Matthews with the still photo credit Woody Creek Distillery

“I was managing Nautilus Island, which was at the time a summer rental, basically,” recalls Master Distiller and Vice President of Operations David Matthews. “Pat and Mark, and Mary later on, turned out for about three weeks, that must have been 2011. And we got chatting and there’s another distillery in Maine that makes potato vodka where I used to help out part-time when I had spare time, so I knew how to make potato vodka. And that was a pretty short discussion from there. They asked me if I’d be interested in moving to Colorado and making potato vodka there. About a year later, I finally moved out.”

When Matthews first moved to Colorado, the distillery was not yet completed. This allowed him to witness the mechanical build-out of the distillery firsthand. While potato vodka was the main emphasis of Woody Creek early on, the team quickly turned to whiskey.

“We grow the potatoes ourselves in the Roaring Fork Valley, and that first year, we managed to harvest I want to say about a quarter of a million pounds,” Matthews recalls. “It sounds like a lot, but it’s not. It became apparent before we even started harvesting it that we were going to run out fairly quickly. Our options at that point were to either buy potatoes, which we didn’t feel like we wanted to do, or make something else. So I actually made a bit of pear brandy that year. There’s quite a lot of good apples and pears locally, so we sourced a bunch of those. But getting to the more important point, we pretty early on decided we’d make a whisky when the potatoes ran out.”

Colorado Sourced Grains

Colorado is also well-known for its barley, as the home of Coors. Colorado also grows a significant amount of wheat, rye, and corn, as well, so sourcing grains to make whiskey locally would be no problem at all.

“The first whisky we made was wheated bourbon,” Matthews says. “Everything we make, all our grains and potatoes, are 100% Colorado sourced. In fact, I’ll go a little deeper, the grains are sourced directly from farmers. I have relationships with three farmers that I use. They’re in different sectors of Colorado. One of them grows corn and rye and the other one grows rye for us. Actually we get our seed potato from him as well.”

Rye Based Spirits

One of the whiskeys that Woody Creek makes is a 100% rye that is made from the Elbon varietal exclusively.

“I was initially focused on what rye varietals I could find in Colorado” says Matthews. “There were three. There’s the Elbon one we’re using. There was Golden and then there was another one called Bono. I did initially source and mash all three of them separately. The Elbon, and I know this is always a bit of a guessing game when you’re dealing with a white dog coming off a still, and you have to age it for four years, but the Elbon seemed to have the most pleasant white dog with a hint of spice, but I guess I had a gut feeling that I was the one to go with.”

Making a rye whiskey with a 100% rye mashbill is challenging, especially at altitude. Some distillers are choosing to make 100% malted rye, which is almost becoming its own separate category. The benefit of malting the rye is that it increases the sugar conversion. Rye alone has a moderate to low enzymatic potential, which is why malted barley, which has an extremely high enzymatic potential, is typically added to a whiskey mash. Rye foams during the fermentation process, which is one challenge, but the biggest challenge is getting the full sugar conversion from the mash, which requires adding enzymes.

“It’s a 100% raw rye and I unashamedly use enzymes to help with the conversion,” Matthews explains. “When you first finish cooking it, it’s sticky and slimy, it has the consistency of wallpaper paste. For the first year or so I was having all kinds of problems with foaming. It’s a big sticky foamy mess if you don’t get it just right. It took about a year for me to dial in the recipe and the conditions, like temperatures and agitation times. It’s to the point that it hasn’t foamed over in quite a long time.”

Matthews employs a relatively short cook to a temperature of 70 degrees centigrade and a four to five day fermentation.

“I like to keep the fermentations slightly colder and longer than some of my contemporaries,” Matthews says. “A slightly cooler, slower fermentation is significantly favorable for the flavor profile of the finished product. There’s definitely late-stage fermentation, even after the alcohol curve has gone completely flat, when you’re not you’re not producing any alcohol but the yeast will start throwing off esters, which will come through to the finished product and do have, again in my opinion, beneficial contributions to make in the finished product.”

Corn Based Spirits

Corn at Woody Creek Distillery — Corn photo credit Woody Creek Distillery

In addition to the rye, Matthews has had the opportunity to work with a number of other pedigreed grains in products like Bourbon and corn whiskey. Olathe corn, local to the area, was one that he was able to source early on.

“It’s named for a town about 50 miles away, and it’s actually in season right now, they grow a fantastic sweet corn,” says Matthews. “I was able to source some of that for a couple of years and then the guy I had didn’t want to do anymore. I made it as a 100% corn whisky, just put it in the barrels as a 100% corn. It took a long time to get good but I’ve got some of it that’s nine and ten years old now and it has a local cult following.”

The Bourbon produced at Woody Creek Distillery is 70% corn and 30% rye with no malted barley. For now they have stopped producing the wheated Bourbon, but that may make a comeback at some point in the future. Matthews has also produced a single malt whiskey, but that is not yet available to consumers. The distillery’s current production averages about a thousand barrels a year. The barrel entry proof is 125.

Woody Creek Old Fashioned photo credit Woody Creek Distillery

“There’s a bigger story to be told about how altitude affects aging spirits in oak,” Matthews says. “There’s definitely different results coming out of barrels that are stored at altitude. I don’t think it’s just the altitude, although that’s definitely a factor of the alterations and the relative volatilities that I was talking about. But I was talking to a climatologist a while back and she was talking about the way that the diurnal pressure changes at altitude and particularly with the Rocky Mountains. I think it was to do with the way the jet stream passes over or something. But the short version is we’re getting bigger and more frequent pressure fluctuations than you do in Eastern states or Scotland, for example. But I’ve yet to see anyone write a scientific paper on it.”

In fact, the differences in how Colorado’s climate affects the distillation and maturation of whiskey is a common theme amongst Colorado distillers. But because the Colorado distilling industry is still so young, there hasn’t been enough data for a meaningful discussion yet.

“I think it’s part of the uniqueness of our spirit and of other Colorado spirits.”

Woody Creek Distillery is open Wednesday thru Saturday, 2-7 p.m. Tours are offered by appointment only, depending on production. Learn more at woodycreekdistillers.com.