Kings County Distillery feels very Brooklyn. Crammed into a 350 sq. ft. room, it’s as if someone decided to distill whiskey in their studio apartment. In the warehouse area of East Williamsburg, the distillery is in a non-descript building on a road where the sign is missing, prompting one man on a recent tour to motion toward his friend, saying, “She thought I brought her to Brooklyn to kill her.” But once inside and up a staircase, the atmosphere is warm and the people even warmer. At the ripe age of two years old – less time than most whiskeys mature in a barrel – Kings County Distillery is the oldest operating whiskey distillery in New York City. Laws changed over the past few years to make it easier to have a small distillery in New York, especially if locally-grown products are used. Kings County Distillery opened in 2010, had their first moonshine that August and their first bourbon that December, using smaller 5 gallon barrels to speed up the aging process that usually happens in a 53-gallon barrel. |
Archives
November 2017
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