Wishing you a safe a happy Fourth of July.
We are closed Friday, July 1 and Saturday, July 2, for some family time this summer.
We are open for tours and tastings, Monday, July 4, from 2pm to sunset.
Tag: featured
Those First 11 cases, sold out and in backorder within 48 hours. Whew!
The early days of making whiskey cuts in a pint jelly jar.
Glen and I have something about twos. Our birthdays, both in December, are on days ending in twos. Our punkin’ was born the second month of 2010. And for two years this past weekend, we began making our first batches of moonshine. Back then it was with a 10-gallon still made from a lobster pot, that sat near the barn door of our previous horse barn, and we spent those weekends in June, making our first 11 cases of 100 proof corn whiskey to ship to WVABCA in Nitro, WV, in the hopes of selling to the stores in the Eastern Panhandle and throughout the state. It takes two weeks to make moonshine, grain to jar as we say, with two main ingredients, local corn and local water.
Photo Credit: Rick Dugan
Glen discussing corn harvesting with Lyle Tabb, our corn supplier with the next generation Tabb
It was about family and friends, coming together, and bringing back a part of our culture and heritage through a shared experience around a jar, something sorely missing in today’s busy society. A dear friend and mentor told us to capture as much of these moments in photo, because we’ll blink and it will change fast. I can’t believe how much has changed, and yet we are still here on the weekends, bringing family and friends, old and new, together over stories and tasting the promise of our yearling bourbon whiskey.
Two years later and we have grown to a second building for production and opened our doors for folks to come a visit our whiskey making distillery life as it unfolds.
Installing the new destillers, 150-gallon each!
The Horse Barn, now a tasting room and for barrel aging bourbon
Ribbon cutting ceremony, June 3, 2016
Click on link here to view a feature on our Ribbon Cutting Ceremony on local WHAG-TV.
We are now open for tours and tastings here at Black Draft Distillery! To schedule a tour, please contact us at 540-686-0100 or email us (info@blackdraftdistillery.com) to let us know what date/time and how many are in your group.
Tours available during 11am to 4pm, Fridays and Saturdays based on availability to provide you a welcome and warm experience.
Tours include a live production viewing (based on distilling schedule), a free sampling of our moonshine and bourbon whiskey (must be 21 or older with valid ID), on-site Moonshine Spirit bottle sales, in addition to T-Shirts, Moonshine Pourers, Decals, Barrel Heads, and more!
We look forward to seeing you here at Black Draft Farm! And of course, we are Family Friendly too! If you have any questions, visit our Contact page for more details and to schedule an appointment.
To tell a great story, you have to go back to the beginning…
It began with a remarkable horse.
Before there was a Black Draft Distillery, we were just Black Draft Farm with a Percheron draft horse named Biscuit. For ten years we were known as “that farm with the big beautiful horse”. The one that would ride through the nearby neighborhoods, bringing friends and family out of the homes to meet her and go on rides. And, they’d fall in love with her just like we did.
And every year starting in the fall, she became the main horse that rode in the Apple Harvest parades, then as Santa’s main ride for the Christmas festivities of our town’s Annual Tree Lighting ceremony.
Last fall, we suddenly lost her, and the barn was left empty with her spirit still very much a strong part of the farm.
And that is when we decided to take a new chapter in our lives in a very different direction. We sat down as a family, and decided to start a new business and bring the farm back to life again. We wanted to bring back the plow-to-earth business that would make our ancestors proud, and that could be handed down to the next generation. And that is when we decided to get into the whiskey business.
When it came time to choose a name for the new venture, there was only one that would honor the spirit of our beloved Biscuit. These stories. That horse. These generations. And, that moonshine. This is what brings family and friends together. And that’s what makes moonshine great!