Whiskey Acres’ sustainable approach to bourbon production in DeKalb County

DEKALB, Ill. (WTVO) — Leaders at Whiskey Acres Distilling Co. in DeKalb County said they’re dedicated to distilling the best quality bourbon in the world.

“There’s just a great sense of satisfaction of being able to bring people to the farm, show them what we do, tell the story of the farm and the farmers, and be able to share that experience over a cocktail,” said co-founder Nick Nagele.

He demonstrated the bourbon-making process from start to finish.

It all starts in the corn field where a massive planter plants the seeds that will eventually become the fruit of Nagele’s labor.

“This is the clean grain,” he showed.

A machine separates all the clean corn that eventually makes its way into Whiskey Acres Distilling Company’s facility in DeKalb.

“This stuff here… you can’t make whiskey from,” he explained. “When you put this in a mash, it’s fodder and material that doesn’t ferment. It gets in the way of the natural fermentation process. By giving the yeast clean grain to work with, we’re able to make a better fermentation and subsequently a better bourbon.”

The clean grain gets put through the hammer mill.

“It takes that whole kernel corn and process it into this which is like a gritty corn flour. We have to do this because we need to expose the starch that we’re eventually going to utilize for the cooking process. This is a really important step in terms of timing because what we’re milling today will be cooked tomorrow, and freshness is important. Think of this just like freshly ground coffee beans make a superior coffee, freshly ground corn makes a superior bourbon,” he said.

Next, the freshly milled grain gets weighed out and cooked.

“We bring that grain over here, weigh it out, and then the grain goes into a mash cooker. We add water and grain together, bring it to a boil to soften the starch. When we’re making a bourbon, we have three different grain ingredients: corn, wheat, and barley. The corn goes in first because it has to cook at a slightly higher temperature. After the corn cook is done, it cools down and we add wheat, which is the ground grain that Eric just weighed out there. That will simmer for a given amount of time. And then we cool it down one more step where we ultimately add malted barley. That does its simmer as well. After we’ve done all those cooks, then we cool it down to below 90 degrees where we eventually add yeast,” he explained.

Next is fermentation.

“This is an active fermenting bourbon mash that will be distilled tomorrow. Right now there’s millions if not billions of little single-cell yeast organisms that are eating that cooked mash that we created for them. They’re converting that sugar into heat, carbon dioxide, and alcohol through a process we know as fermentation. Those yeast cells go to work over three to four days and convert all that sugar into alcohol. When it’s done, we’ll have somewhere between a 10 or 11 percent alcohol-by-volume distillers beer,” he said.

The entire process, Nagele said, takes a lot of power and water.

“Sustainability is a big portion of what we do here,” he said. “All the water that we use is reclaimed, recycled, and recirculated. Our energy is offset by being 100 percent solar powered. Our carbon footprint of processing grain is virtually zero because we grow it there and distill it there.”

Now, it’s time for the distilling process to take over.

“The grain, the water, and the yeast and the alcohol all get pumped from the fermenter to the still. The still uses heat and vapor pressure to volatize the alcohol in there and make it climb from the still coming in contact with the copper, climbing through this column as a vapor where that copper continues to refine it, purify it, make it clear, make it higher proof, to ultimately make it to the very top where it follows this stainless steel line arm pipe into this cylinder here, which we call the condenser. The condenser has a series of copper tubes running through it. Those copper tubes receive the alcohol vapor. Outside of those copper tubes we have cold water circulating. The cold water cools the copper, copper cools the alcohol vapor, and the alcohol vapor condenses down to a liquid comes out here that is known as ‘white dog,'” Nagele said.

“As we’re distilling, the alcohol comes down here into this tank here where we’re able to separate what we call the ‘heads, heart, and the tails,’ which is essentially the good stuff from the bad stuff. The good stuff we collect, and we pumped it over into a tank where we combine several days of distillation together,” he showed.

“They then take the ‘white dog’ whiskey and put it into several different barrels that live in this barrel warehouse for at a minimum of four years and up to ten.

“We make just over one barrel of whiskey a day,” Nagele said. “The entire process here is about quality, not quantity.”

He says the company will continue to focus on the farm in the future, their seed-to-spirit process, and exploring the best varietals of corn to make what he says will be the best bourbon in the world.

“It’s been wonderfully exciting to be here when the idea was literally a seed and to be in a position today where we’ve got bourbon that’s been resting for over ten years,” he said. “It’s required a lot of patience, but it’s been a lot of fun along the way.”