Distiller for a Day at Leatherwood distillery Pleasant View, TN

Start the day enjoying Bloody Marys while getting to know the owner and retired Green Beret, Andy Lang at 10am at the distillery. Along with Andy, you will fire up the mash cooker and the still. While waiting for the mash cooker and still to heat up and start producing, you will take a detailed tour of the distillery with a description of the Leatherwood distilling process.

Once the cooker is ready you and Andy will make mash together from start to finish, learning about the mash fermentation process. With Andy's guidance, you will run the still as Andy explains the importance of each step of the process.

Your day will end tapping barrels and taking samples from various aged whiskey straight from those barrels.

Duration is 10am until complete. Long day.

About Leatherwood Distillery Owner and Operator Andrew Lang

Andrew started brewing wine and beer in 1996, his main passion was in creating special southern sweet wines such as muscadine, peach and strawberry. After a little dabbling in making beer with different grains and yeasts he realized that there wasn't a lot of difference between creating a Must for beer and a mash for whiskey. This is when the lightbulb went off. Andrew was making wine and beer for friends and family and then going out and purchasing whiskey, "this had to change." Andrew did some research on stills and how to build one and came across some plans for a simple column still utilizing coper pipes, a beer keg and a turkey cooker. Being a green beret, it only made sense to build a still utilizing only parts that could be found anywhere in the world. Take a step back to the invasion of Iraq, while waiting along the border of Kuwait to invade. Andrew told a buddy that he could make wine out of items in an MRE Meal Ready to Eat. 1 pack of skittles a water bottle and a piece of shelf stable bread and the wine started fermenting. Actually, it was like drinking a glass of skittles but with high content alcohol. Over the next 16 years Andrew perfected the art of fermenting utilizing ingredients available to him wherever he was. His favorite recipe has always been Sweet Feed whiskey, which he learned in Afghanistan from feed for the horses the Green Berets would use. The first batches were undrinkable but after time it became a staple of what would come to be a special mix of different grains and distilling techniques taking him to today with a fine sipping whiskey with a completely out of the box idea, as a green beret should operate.