Exclusive Interview with Mr. Tim Russell, Founder and Head Distiller of Allegheny Distilling

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Exclusive Interview with Mr. Tim Russell, Founder and Head Distiller at Allegheny Distilling  

Q: What is your full name, title, company name and company location?

Tim Russell, Founder and Head Distiller, Allegheny Distilling, 3212A Smallman Street, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.

Q: Can you tell us a little bit about Allegheny Distilling and what inspired you to start your own distillery?

We’re the first commercially-available rum to be made in Pennsylvania since Prohibition. All of our rums are a little different in that, rather than molasses, we’re using 100% turbinado, a raw sugar that we source from a farm in Louisiana. All of our rums are pot distilled on 100% copper pot stills imported from Spain.

 I had always had a passion for brewing beer and considered opening a brewery. Conveniently, the state of Pennsylvania opened up legislation to allow craft distilling to become a viable enterprise at right about the same time I had lost my job as a project manager for a defense contractor that had just gone through a large buy-out. So I decided it was a good time to go for it, and at the time, the only spirits being produced in Pennsylvania were whiskey and vodka. I knew I had to do something different. 

We produce white, spiced, a Single Barrel aged rum, and Queen’s Share rums. None of our rums have any added sugar, so they’re not heavy or syrupy in any way. As a matter of fact, our spiced rum is bone dry because of the way we distill it. Our spiced rum is also made using eight different spices: vanilla bean, orange zest, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, clove, cardamom, and a bit of anise, all fresh ground. This rum was awarded Best-in-Category Spiced Rum from the American Distilling Institute in 2015.

Our Single Barrel aged rum is just that, rum aged for at least a year in 10 or 15-gallon American oak barrels. What makes this different is that though we’re using smaller barrels like many other craft distillers for that increased surface contact area, we’re using used rum barrels that are already stripped of most of the oaky tannins. This prevents the rum from becoming too whiskey-like or oaky from the increased surface area of char and lets more of the natural rum flavors from the spirit chemistry to come through. I believe this complexity of flavor is what allowed it to receive the Best- in-Show recognition this year from the American Craft Spirits Association. 

Our Queen’s Share rums are made using the Queen’s Share method of distillation, a sort of forgotten rum distillation method that was passed to me by Eric Watson, Master Distiller of Cayman Distilling. 

In this process we conserve the late tail runnings of our normal distillations, those funky, oily portions. After about ten batches of normal rum distillations we’ve collected enough tails to redistill on their own. This reconcentrates the spirit in ethanol but also draws with it a lot of the heavy flavors and aroma.

 And this third distillation, already so far removed from the heads, makes an exceptionally smooth spirit, although aggressive in flavor. We bottle these at cask strength and sell them unaged or in aged finishes of bourbon oak, rye oak and double barrel. Our Double Barrel finish won Best-in-Class rum in 2015 from the American Craft Spirits Association, and our rye finish won gold in 2016 while the unaged and bourbon oak aged both won silver medals. 

Q: What have been some of the biggest challenges you have encountered since the beginning?

Bureaucracy is always the hardest part. After waiting nearly six months for our federal and state licenses, I was finally able to make rum, but still required label approval to sell our first product. I was days from approval before the politicians voted to shut down the government, including the TTB, in October of 2013 over a budget stalemate. This effectively put any potential of earning income on indefinite hold.

Since we’ve become more established, the growing pains of keeping up with demand are always an issue. We’ve constantly been adding fermentation capacity, just recently more than  doubling it, and added a new still at almost three times the volume of our initial one.

Q: I want to congratulate you and your team for the Best in Show award you received at the 2016 American Craft Spirits Association spirits competition. Can you please share with our readers your thoughts and feelings when you first heard the news? 

We won Best-in-Class rum from ACSA in 2015, so I really felt anything less this year would have been a bit of a let down. I wanted it again this year more than anything and our Single Barrel rum achieved that. I didn’t think I could have been happier, but that award put it in the running for Best-in-Show against all the other class winning spirits. This always seems to go to a whiskey. I mean, everybody loves whiskey right now. It was really a shock to hear the announcement that our rum beat out all the other spirits from over 400 distilleries, but I couldn’t have been more proud.

Q: Now that you have this award, what is next? What other milestone would you like to reach?

We really want to get the product into more hands, as we’re building up notoriety and demand, but we’re currently only distributed in our home state of Pennsylvania. We’re in the process of wrapping up a production expansion that could increase our capacity by three or four times our current amount. This would allow us to look into some additional east coast states for distribution.

Q: Do you have any advice for someone who is considering opening up their own distillery?

Just to open a distillery, get ready to work, and work harder than you expect. Get ready to wait, and wait longer than you expect. And if you start off well and need to grow, that’s when the real hard work starts. I think most importantly, keep clear and reasonable goals. I don’t know of any true craft distilleries that blow up overnight. Own your home market first and foremost.

Q: Are you currently aging any other special rums that will be released in the near future?

We actually plan on putting our Single Barrel to rest for longer periods of time, likely aging 2-4 years at minimum from here out. We know it has real potential and I want to really see what it can do. We continue to age our Queen’s Share rums and experiment with different barrel finishes. 

Q: Can you please tell us where your rums are currently available for purchase?

We’re only distributing within Pennsylvania at the moment. Though, we do online retail through www.Cellar.com with delivery to about 40 states. We’re about to wrap up a production expansion and are evaluating secondary markets and distributors right now. We hope to have product available elsewhere by mid-summer.

Q: Do you offer tours of your distillery?

We do tours if scheduled in advance for larger groups where we can get more in depth. For most walk-ins our distillery and tasting room is set up where you can see the whole distilling operation from your seat at the bar.

Q: So you have a cocktail bar at your distillery? Can you tell us a little more about it? What is your signature cocktail?

In Pennsylvania, we’re permitted to sell spirits direct to consumers by the bottle or glass, so that gives us the opportunity to serve cocktails to our guests, which we do on Fridays,  Saturdays, and Sundays. These are all craft cocktails, as we’re using fresh squeezed juices and making many of the mixers and syrups from scratch. We’re a bit limited in that we can only serve our own spirits, so we tend to get creative and make a number of liqueurs with our white rum, including curacao, coffee liqueur, and falernum.

I’d have to say our signature cocktail is our take on a Ti’ Punch since it uses two of our rums and, in general, is a really underrated cocktail.

• 1.5oz Maggie’s Farm White Rum

• 0.5oz Maggie’s Farm Queen’s Share Unaged

• 0.5 Sirop de Canne

• 0.5 Fresh-Squeezed Lime Juice

Though our rum is made from raw sugar, it isn’t quite an agricole, but the funkiness from the Queen’s Share is a nice bridge to that extra flavor.

Q: If people want to contact you, how may they reach you? 

They can always email us through the website at www.MaggiesFarmRum.com or call the distillery directly at 724-322-5415.

Q: Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers?

As we grow, we’re looking to add more spirits to our lineup, but not to ever lose focus on making good rum. Before the end of summer, we hope to add curacao, coffee liqueur, and falernum to our lineup, all made with our rum base rather than neutral grain spirits.

We also have a really unique dark rum blend that we’ll be releasing soon as well.

Margaret: Again Mr. Russell, thank you so much for this interview and I wish you and your team much success. 

Cheers!

Margaret Ayala, Publisher