Exclusive Interview with Mr. Andy Keller, Head Distiller & Production Manager, at Blackwater Distilling

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Exclusive Interview with Mr. Andy Keller, Head Distiller & Production Manager, at Blackwater Distilling

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

Andy Keller, Head Distiller & Production Manager, Blackwater Distilling, Stevensville, MD.

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

Blackwater Distilling was founded by Chris and Jon Cook, and we put out our first product, Sloop Betty Vodka in 2011.

We were Maryland’s first fully licensed distillery in four decades, and we wanted to bring distilling back to a state that had before and directly after Prohibition been one of the largest distilling states in the nation. I personally got into distilling out of a love for the product, and a need to make something tangible. After college I had worked briefly at a winery before joining a big PR firm where I worked for a couple years. It was a great experience, but at the end of the day I hadn’t made anything. I couldn’t hand out press releases at Christmas like my dad hands out pieces of handmade miniature furniture. I got into home brewing, which I did religiously for about six years before I started seriously considering starting a brewery. But looking at the market, there were thousands of breweries and I didn’t think I really had anything unique to add to that space. At one point I read an article about craft distilling, and I was hooked. I started collecting as many articles and books as I could and teaching myself about distilling.  

Q: What have been some of the biggest challenges you have faced, on your journey to opening up the distillery?

Being the first distillery in the state in forty years, we faced challenges at every step. Many jurisdictions thought of distilleries as smoke-belching factories, and it took a while to find a locality that would work with us on zoning. Several government offices had only one person who had ever inspected a distillery before, so there was a learning curve both on our end as well as for the state and the local government.

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

A lot of “product” people like me hope to start breweries or wineries or distilleries. 

Having a great product is crucial, but it’s not enough for success.

If your first love is making the product, don’t forget that the product is only one part of the business. It takes money to let people know you exist, and it takes money to get your product on liquor store shelves and back bars, so make sure you’re setting your fundraising sights high enough to cover all the needs of the business and not just the plant and equipment.

And if your first love is running a business and you just want that business to be a distillery, make sure you’ve got someone who can make a top-notch product. With more distilleries opening up every day, it’s going to take a great product to stay competitive.

Q: What rums do you currently have in your portfolio?

We’ve got a rapidly expanding portfolio of rums. For all our rums right now, we start with a golden cane syrup. It gives us a lighter but more well - rounded and complex flavor than molasses.

Our first releases in 2015 were un-aged, our Picaroon White and Picaroon Gold Rums. For both, our goal is to be more flavorful than the big-brand white and gold rums but to be just as approachable. Many of the big-brand white rums are essentially sugarcane-based vodkas, distilled to near neutral and relentlessly carbon filtered. You’ll be able to taste our white rum in a mojito or daiquiri, and in a way that adds to the drink. 

Our gold rum is our white rum with a touch of caramel that we make from scratch in the distillery from evaporated cane juice.

Rounding out our un-aged rums is our 120 proof Picaroon Overproof White Rum. While our 80 proof white rum gets a light carbon filtration, the overproof stays unfiltered in order to retain the full flavor of the raw rum.

In late 2016 we emptied our first rum barrels to create our Picaroon Dark Rum. Picaroon Dark is a blend of our rum aged for between 18 and 24 months in new, charred American oak, our un-aged rum, our house-made caramel, and a small amount of an intensely aromatic blend of rums from the French West Indies. We’ve been fortunate to win “Best of Category” with the dark rum at the American Distilling Institute competition in both 2017 and 2018.

Recently we released our first 100% aged rums. We age almost exclusively in 53-gallon barrels (with the exception of some larger barrels and a handful of 25-gallon barrels), so we’ve had to exercise some patience. In February we released the first batch of our flagship product, Picaroon Solera Aged Rum. We have a true solera consisting of five levels of five barrels each. We’ll be bottling only twice a year, and each bottling will yield only a few hundred bottles, so it’s an extremely limited product. We use two different yeast strains for the solera aged rum, and a variety of barrels, including new American oak, used bourbon and rye barrels, and used port and red wine barrels. I love the product already, but as we get into subsequent bottlings, we’re going to have an even more rich and complex solera aged rum.

Recently, we also released our first “single barrel” rum. I use the quotation marks because the rum has been through two barrels (a year and a half in used bourbon and another year in second-use port), but the bottling is from a single barrel. And finally, we have our Picaroon Cold Brew Coffee Rum Liqueur, which is our white rum infused with vanilla beans and allspice berries, blended with a cold brew coffee that we make with locally roasted beans, and sweetened with a house-made caramel syrup. 

Q:Congratulations are in order for you, as you recently won “Best of Category” with your Picaroon Dark Rum at the 2018 American Distilling Institute Craft Rum Awards. Now that you have this award, what is next? What other milestone would you like to reach?

Thanks! I’ve been tweaking our fermentations and have been really happy with the results. I’m excited to see how the next batches of our un-aged rums fare in competition. I’d certainly like to see more “Best of Category” awards! Behind the scenes, I’ve been working on introducing bacteria to our fermentations to create some of the heavier flavors found in some of my favorite Caribbean rums.

Q: Do you have signature cocktails? If yes, which one is the most popular?

We aren’t able to serve cocktails at the distillery yet, although we will be expanding and opening a tavern in the next few months. At home I love to make a Rum Boulevardier (2 parts rum, 1 part Campari, 1 part sweet vermouth) or a Rum Old Fashioned (rum, sugar, Angostura bitters, orange peel) with either our dark rum or solera aged rum. And our solera aged rum in particular is wonderful neat or on the rocks.

Q: Are you currently setting barrels aside for a much older rum bottling in the future?

Setting aside barrels for long aging is a tough thing to do at this point. I do hope that we can be releasing at least four-year-old rums before too long. 

Q: Where are your rums currently available for purchase?

We’re distributed throughout Maryland and Washington, DC, and we hope to be in Delaware this year.

Q: Do you also distill or plan to distill other spirit s in addition to rum?

Right now, rum is the vast majority of what we distill in-house, although we have a number of blended vodkas and whiskies and distill a bit of malt whiskey on site. I’m working on gin right now, as well as more rum liqueurs.

Q: Do you of fer tours of your distillery?

We’re open 12-5 seven days a week and we do a tour/tasting on each hour, no reservations require. If you’ve got a group of more than 15 people we always appreciate a heads up. We’re working on moving/expanding into a new location soon, where we’ll be opening a full tavern in addition to moving much of the production there. We’ve made a lot of progress with the local legal environment over the past seven years, and we’re excited to take advantage of one of the most significant changes and be able to serve our spirits in a way that is much more familiar to the vast majority of people: in cocktails.

Q: I understand you offer a “VIP Bottle Club”. Can you tell us more about this club?

The VIP Bottle Club is a quarterly subscription to our spirits and mixers from other local producers. Each quarter, we select two or three of our spirits and potentially one of the locally made mixers that we carry and put them together with some suggested recipes. It’s a fun way to explore our portfolio at a good discount off of retail, and we try to include limited and hard-to-find spirits. Our last set, for example, included our long-sold-out “Geist,” which was a whiskey we distilled from bock, doppelbock, and Oktoberfest beers from one of the major Munich breweries and aged in new oak for 13 months. You can find all the info at http://www.blackwaterdistilling.com/vipbottleclub. Unfortunately with shipping of spirits permitted in so few states, it’s pick-up only right now. 

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

I can be reached at akeller@blackwaterdistilling.com and you can follow me on Instagram at @distillerpants. You can follow Blackwater Distilling on Instagram at @blackwaterspirits, on Facebook at /BlackwaterDistilling, and on Twitter @BlackwaterTM.

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

Drink more rum—and seek out the good stuff! Rum in my opinion is the most diverse and interesting category of spirits. There are so many rabbit holes you can go down as a drinker and as a producer. Americans in particular think of rum in terms of the two or three main brands they can find on the shelves of most liquor stores, and that’s an extremely poor representation of what the category has to offer. I’m sure your readers are well aware, but one thing that’s surprising to so many people who walk through our door is that a good aged rum is just as sippable neat or on the rocks as a good aged bourbon or scotch whiskey. So, thanks to you for spreading the gospel of rum, and thanks to your readers for be willing to explore the fun things we craft producers are doing with the category!

Again Andy, thank you so much for the opportunity to interview you. I wish you and your team much success and look forward to seeing what else you have in stock for us. Cheers!

Margaret E. Ayala, Publisher