Walk in the door at Midstate Distillery, and the sweet smell hits you first.
It’s molasses, says Dan Healy. He guides you to the line of 250-gallon tubs in frosted plastic lining the wall. All are filled with a dark liquid. Some are warm from the addition of hot water.
“This one’s been fermenting—Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday—five days, so it’s almost done,” says Healy. “Truly, I could probably start distilling this. It’s maybe 8 percent alcohol at the moment. I may let it go a little bit higher.”
Craft distilling has come to Dauphin County in the appropriately named Midstate Distillery. Established in a former paint manufacturing building near the Farm Show Complex, the venture aims to educate a public that increasingly craves authentic tastes—not mass produced by faceless corporations but crafted by neighbors.
Just why does a world saturated with craft breweries and family wineries now need craft distilleries?
“Need?” says Healy. “Does anyone need more alcohol?”
I would say yes, but he continues. It’s like rooting for the home team and showing the world what the hometown can do.
“There’s always an interest for something new, something handmade, something handcrafted, something made locally,” he says. “People really want to see what somebody in their neighborhood can produce.”
Lots to Learn
Healy and his brother-in-law, Brian Myers, launched Midstate after leaving a cabinetry business where they had worked together. The craft brewing market seemed saturated, but craft distilling was “a very, very young industry.”
Like other craft distillers, Healy and Myers are learning as they go. They have read books and taken courses in Colorado. They have learned to deal with the bureaucracy of liquor. They have learned the science behind turning raw materials into liquor.
“I feel like I’ve learned massive amounts, but there’s huge, huge amounts to learn and incorporate into production,” says Healy during a tour of the space, which got a top-to-bottom makeover, mostly from the elbow grease of Healy, Myers and an army of friends. Dawn Healy, Healy’s sister and Myers’ wife, takes care of the books.
Décor-wise, the bar was meticulously handmade by woodworker Joe Costa from local timber and beams salvaged from the basement. A see-through divider of vintage windows gives visitors a view of the distilling equipment. Barrels, some for aging rum, are used bourbon barrels from Kentucky’s Old Forester distillery.
Upon opening in January, Midstate offered Shakey Jake’s rum, named after Myers’ grandfather, and the hilariously named Pennsyltucky Moonshine, a corn-based whiskey. Iron and Ice vodka, with a label depicting the Walnut Street Bridge, will be released this month.
Learning on the fly extends to potential customers, who have grown up with mass-market products often distilled using an efficient, flavor-stripping process, says Healy. Remember when craft beers tasted funny? Same thing, he says. The distiller’s job is educating consumers to value hand-crafted spirits.
For instance, Midstate has an aged rum, nice and drinkable, which captures “the right aspects from the wood, the vanillas, the caramels. You can even get a cinnamon taste.”
“I’m not saying there aren’t a lot of good products out there, but we’re trying to do one that captures a lot of that flavor that comes from the raw ingredients,’’ says Healy.
Homegrown Tastes
By mid-2016, Midstate hopes to have its products on state liquor store shelves under a program started in 2015 that lets licensed limited distilleries put up to 10 products in 10 stores, to start.
When the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board created a limited license in 2012 for small distilleries, it issued seven licenses. In 2014, it issued 31. As of October 2015, 74 products from Pennsylvania distilleries were on state store shelves.
Let your imagination soar when thinking of the homegrown tastes available. Sure, Pennsylvania distilleries produce gin, whiskey and rye, but they also concoct absinthe, tequila, eggnog and strawberry liqueur. Over just a few years, PLCB sales of these products have jumped from $3.7 million annually to $4.5 million, a 21 percent increase.
“Spirits have always been distilled in Pennsylvania,” notes PLCB Marketing and Merchandising Director Dale Horst. “There were distilleries going all the way back to the Revolutionary War.”
Oh, that’s right. The Whiskey Rebellion—our homegrown revolt against the young federal government’s first sin tax. The state’s distillery-revival show that “customers have been responding in a very positive way,” says Horst.
“Just as there’s been an increase in limited wineries and an increase in craft beer and microbreweries, the limited distillers have found that people want to buy local, and they can compete with the national brands if their product is of good quality and they market it right,” he says.
At Midstate Distillery, tastings reveal the subtlety in flavors that tongues have missed over the years. Tours show off the Double Diamond copper still and the rest of the process that is, “at its core, vaporization and recondensation,” which separates and refines the alcohol created in fermented liquid, says Healy.
The major distillers, having seen the surprised look on big brewing’s face when craft brews cut into their business, could be a bit on the offensive. More and more, Healy sees commercials “for products that appear to be more craft-focused.” He’s fine with that. After all, it will “also help turn people on to craft distilling.”
“I’m hoping our products evolve and, as time goes by, we just continue to innovate and release better and newer products as we go,” he says.
Midstate Distillery is located at 1817 N. Cameron St., Harrisburg. For more information, visit www.midstatedistillery.com or call 717-745-5040.
