Envy Distilling is all about craft spirits, and we love the personal craft involved in using traditional equipment, operating techniques and distillation methods. It is at our core to love what we do, because we think that makes our spirits an expression of our personal passions and enjoyment. We hope you agree!
In this blog, we'll describe a few aspects of what this means, behind the scenes.
We've selected a series of traditionally made, hand-beaten, imported Portuguese copper stills. We have four stills in total, each serving a different purpose during the production of our spirits and recipes. While we think they look beautiful, we really chose them because they follow the traditional methods of craft distilling, and evoke a sense of distilling history and the wonder of the craft. They produce variable results, and need close attention and care. We're less interested in pumping out perfectly consistent bottled products (on modern industrial stills), and more passionate about the crafting process and embracing something that requires love and skill.
Being made of copper is important for distilling, especially when dealing with the wine distillation we do for brandy. There are small amounts of bad-tasting components that can come through the distillation process, and sulphur compounds are particularly notorious and noticeable. Copper has the ability to react with many of these compounds, turning them into solid particles (copper salts) and preventing them getting into the spirit product - and has been a traditional distilling material for well over a century.
The shape of our still "head" is also a very traditional centuries-old "Alembic" style, looking a bit like a squat onion, with a downwards-pointing swan neck for directing the cooling vapours into the worm tub. This shape promotes both the contact of the free vapours with the copper, helping the above reactions, and also with the cooler metal surface. During the early stages of the process, the vapours will hit the cool metal sides of the Alembic head, causing "reflux" (condensing and dripping back into the pot), which helps refine the distilled spirit.
Our stills use old style "worm tubs" for cooling, following the Cognac and Armagnac traditions in France. This is essentially a drum of water with the hot coil of copper pipe (the "worm") immersed in and through it. When the hot alcohol vapour passes through the cold copper pipe, it turns back into liquid again - and another chance for the copper-sulphur reactions to improve the flavour. The copper worm coil is only immersed in the cold water, there is no contact between the cooling water and the stuff being distilled.
The worm tub has a cool-water inlet at the bottom, and a warm-water outlet at the top, flowing slowly from bottom-to-top. This promotes layers of heat, which is a gentle way of cooling the vapours as they pass from top-to-bottom.
This little device is quite common in different forms, but we think this version is cute. This is a small vertical tube at the spirits outlet, a bit like the U-bend in your sink, which allows us to float the alcoholmeter throughout the distillation. This makes it super easy to check where we are in the distillation cycle, and make our "three cuts" between Heads, Hearts, and Tails. Or in the case of brandy, we use four cuts of Head, Hearts, Seconds, and Tails - following the traditions of the Cognac region.
The picture below looks like we were collecting near 65% ABV at this point.
Well, not really, but almost. The connection between the pot and head is metal-to-metal, and can leak vapours if not sealed well. For this, we use a very traditional technique of applying a flour-and-water paste, basically wet dough, to this junction. This hardens during the distilling heat-up phase and forms a perfect and organic vapour seal. At the end, we have the soak the cooked and hard paste in some water for an hour or so, and it comes right off - and into the composter or paddock!
Environmental sustainability and minimising impact is a key value of Envy Distilling. We work hard to lessen our footprint on the world, and these decisions impact our small batch approach and seasonally-driven processes.
Our distillery proudly runs off-grid. But not only that, we only use power captured from our solar panels, supported by batteries. As far as we know, that makes us unique in Australia, in not only being off-grid but also without emissions! It is somewhat challenging to do distilling this way - which is all about high energy needs: boiling and cooling! All the water used for the products, the production process, and running the distillery door - is all rainwater captured on-site. Our liquid wastes are treated in our worm-farm septic system, and our solid organic wastes (like used botanicals) are composted and/or dispersed back out to our vineyard and paddocks.
Although our stills were originally designed to sit over an open flame, typically gas-driven, all our stills are electrically-run. The smaller stills use conventional kitchen hotplates, which is enough to provide the distillation heat at very small scale. Our spirits workhorse, Lady, is powered by a 4.5kW explosion-proof Italian electrical heating element, mounted into the back of the pot. Our larger wine still, Madam, is powered by two of these, capable of 9kW of heating.
Performing alcohol distillation over an open flame is frowned on in Australia, especially by our safety standards, and this would be a little difficult to do while staying safe and compliant. Importantly for us, using electricity allows us to keep our distillery powered only by the sun, during the many sunny days in Heathcote, and avoid creating any emissions from gas, wood, oil or other sources of off-grid energy, and also avoid loading the power grid with the energy intensive requirements of a distillery. We love our choices, and the sun has proven to be a very capable energy partner! However, this approach does mean we can only distill when the sun allows us to - and energy-hungry Madam is unable to run during the depths of winter, with its shorter days and weaker sunlight. As I write this blog, I've had to delay today's distillation on Madam due to a very overcast day.
We do use a battery system to provide supporting power during short times without sun - especially when we start distilling very early in the morning before the sun has yet to hit the right angle. We often start the process using yesterday's power in the batteries from about 7am, which then get charged up when the panels are in peak output from about 10am.
The below graph shows our distillation load (amounting to 52kWh), the 17kW solar panels and the 26kWh batteries - and how they interact when Madam is performing a wine distillation.
Heating and boiling the stills is only the first part. Distillers need to then remove all that heat to turn the vapours back into liquid form. All the energy put into the stills needs to come back out.
Our stills use old style "worm tubs" for cooling, following the Cognac and Armagnac traditions in France. This is essentially a drum of water with the hot coil of copper pipe immersed in and through it, which turns our alcohol vapour back into liquid again. The worm tub has a cool-water inlet at the bottom, and a warm-water outlet at the top, flowing bottom-to-top.
For our small experimental still, a small 20L bucket of water is used, and for Little Miss we use a larger 80L drum of water. Pumped around with a pond pump, these water volumes are enough to take the heat of one distillation run without getting too warm.
Our larger stills are connected to a series of three IBC cubes, amounting to 3,000L of cooling water. The first IBC cube receives the warm water flowing out of each worm tub outlet, and is connected to the second IBC cube (bottom to top), which is then connected to the last IBC cube (bottom to top again) - from which the coolest water is then pumped into the worm tub inlet, completing the closed loop circuit. This setup separates the thermal layers of water, and keeps the last IBC cube as cool as possible. 3,000L is enough cooling water to run Madam several times a week, and more than enough for Lady.
We do all this because Heathcote is a dry, drought-prone climate. We don't have access to town water (or any such services!), and just can't afford to waste good water by pumping it away. We also want to reserve as much electrical power as we can for the stills, and so have avoided the need for powered water chillers or other coolers that would draw more of our precious energy. Our system works very well, even during hot days, and the worm tubs actually prefer to run a little warm in order to gently condense the vapours. We had some turbulent and undesirable results when we first commissioned the stills, by cooling too soon and too quickly!
All this means that we not only enjoy reliable, cost-free power and cooling, but we're demonstrating something special for our industry, and others as well. Even an intensive process such as distilling in a rural drought-prone area can be done efficiently, environmentally, and produce great products. The constraints drive how we do business - as they always do. But for us, the results are worth it.
]]>We've selected a series of traditionally made, hand-beaten, Portuguese copper stills. We have four stills in total, each serving a different purpose during the development of our recipes, and production of our spirits.
We think they look beautiful, and evoke a sense of distilling history and the wonder of the craft. Another blog post will dive deeper into these traditional techniques, and what makes our processes so interesting!
]]>Victoria’s Container Deposit Scheme (CDS Vic) is live.
Any customer that brings back an empty Envy Distilling 700ml bottle to our distillery door, in reusable condition, will receive $5 off their purchase of a replacement 700ml bottle of spirits. You get an extra $2.50 for each additional one you bring - or if you just bring one back without making a new purchase.
]]>Envy Distilling, as a supplier of bottled spirits, is a "First Supplier" - that is, the manufacturer and packaging part. However, the Container Deposit Scheme currently does not include bottles used for spirits, such as our award-winning gin. That's a shame, because we care deeply about our sustainability story, minimising our impact, and ensuring a better future through the Circular Economy and environmental responsibility.
Our customers love our bottles, and so do we. They are beautiful, robust, and very reusable. And they cost much more than 10 cents!! So, we're doing one better.
Any customer that brings back an empty Envy Distilling 700ml bottle to our distillery door, in reusable condition, will receive $5 off their purchase of a replacement 700ml bottle of spirits. You get an extra $2.50 for each additional one you bring - or if you just bring one back without making a new purchase.
Examples:
We're serious about reducing our impact on the world, and also want to ensure our customers are encouraged to come see us again! Together, we can always do better, and we look forward to handing out lots of returned bottle deposits!
]]>Session 1: 11:00am - 1:00pm
Session 2: 2:00pm - 4:00pm
Session 1: 11:00am - 1:00pm
Session 2: 2:00pm - 4:00pm
Session 1: 11:00am - 1:00pm
Session 2: 2:00pm - 4:00pm
]]>With friends coming from Melbourne and interstate (Brisbane & Sydney) to help us celebrate, and all the fabulous locals and neighbours popping by to wish us well and try our gins, it truly is a day we’ll remember. We feel so loved and grateful to have all of their support and for sharing this journey with us.
We were also honoured to have attendance from City of Greater Bendigo, with our local representative Councillors Matthew Evans and Greg Penna officiating with a ribbon cutting ceremony, and welcoming speech. We are greatly appreciative of their interest, support and taking time out of their weekends for us.
Thank you also to everyone who sent us beautiful messages of congratulations, just knowing you’re thinking of us brings a smile to our faces.
We have a little more work to do and will be closed for a few weeks to get ready for regular hours, which will be both Saturday and Sunday each weekend. We hope to see you at the distillery soon!
(Photos shared are courtesy of Cr Matthew Evans and our friend Brian Zerafa, as we were so busy making sure everyone was having a great time!)
The bar area is almost ready to receive visitors, and we hope to see you here when we open. We’re finalising menus, furnishings and making sure there’s plenty of parking.
We’re rather excited, to say the least! Stay tuned for more details about the Grand Opening - but check out Heathcote on Show right now, as we’ll be on the cellar door trail (10-12th June) : https://www.heathcoteonshow.com.au/whats-on
]]>Our cellar door construction is finally underway in Ladys Pass, just north of Heathcote in central Victoria! The planning, design and permits are always time consuming, and the progress is largely invisible. We are very excited to see some dirt has moved, foundations are in, and framing is being assembled.
With this facility, we will finally be able to setup in our own permanent space, and host you for a tasting or a drink. Our cellar door is modest in scale and scope, but we want it to represent the authentic producer's cellar door, and talk to you about the art & craft of traditional distilling techniques. Our Portuguese copper stills are being readied for commissioning in their new home, and we hope visitors will ask us all about why we love these.
We looking forward to opening for visitors in a matter of months… Watch this space!
]]>Plastic is a “wonder material” in many ways: it is very efficient to produce, including low energy, low water consumption in manufacturing, and lightweight. It is strong, relatively inert, and can be made air-tight and waterproof easily. It’s great for shipping liquids and providing padding for shipping! Unfortunately, it then stays around our environment for a long while.
Unlike many other materials, plastic just doesn’t degrade and breakdown “nicely”. It’s waste we just can’t afford to create, and so in Envy Distilling we’re doing all we can to avoid creating any at all.
In our cardboard packaging, we have used a minimalist design for shipping, relying on the double-layer of cardboard and the intrinsic strength of our high-quality (and beautiful) bottle. Our honeycomb Hex Wrap paper wrapping is our replacement for foam or bubble wrap. Our shipping Ecolabels are also compostable paper, printed on an ink-free thermal printer. Even the sticky tape used to seal the box is not actually plastic but a cellulose polymer designed to breakdown properly.
These last 3 products are from Heaps Good Packaging, and Envy Distilling has invested in their recent public funding rounds to ensure that they are getting the right support from industry partners just like us!
We still have more to improve, and knowing the areas for improvement is a good thing. We are conscious of every choice, and want to keep doing better. If you have comments or feedback, or further ideas you think we should know about, please let us know!
]]>Heathcote is in the heart of Central Victoria, established around 1850 as part of the historic goldfields and located along McIvor Creek and McIvor ranges. It is a beautiful part of Victoria, with sunnier-than-usual weather and a rugged terrain. It is also very well known "Shiraz country", receiving an Australian Geographic Indicator (GI) for its unique wines in 2002. Those who appreciate a good bold red wine would very likely be familiar with Heathcote's amazing Shiraz character, and might have even sampled some of the diverse varieties now being grown there.
Being a rugged climate also translates to its terroir. The tough Cambrian soils are fantastic for concentrating the flavours in the grapevines of the area, a mixture of well-draining clays, silt and rock.
Envy Distilling has always aimed to have a deep connection with Heathcote wines, and we have now officially relocated the business (and our home) to the area. Our grape-based gins, and eventually brandy, will reflect the local produce and unique character that the region offers.
While we're still building our cellar door for visitors to come see us, and the maturation facility for our fine aged brandies, we will continue to "pop-up" in regional events, Melbourne Gin Festival, and other opportunities. We're excited to enter this next phase of our journey, with much more to come. Stay tuned!
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We had such a great time at the 2022 event that we had to book our spot at the upcoming Melbourne Gin Festival 2023! Tickets sold out very quickly last time, so get your tickets for next year’s event ASAP.
We'll be there with our refreshing gin products - Sea & Stars, and Picnic Gin - and our palate-resetting coffee beans! We might even bring some new creations for you to try... And of course, the event is a great way to chat with fellow gin-lovers, gain some new fans and supporters, and highlight the absolute worldwide leadership of the Australian gin industry.
The event will be held at The Timber Yard, nearby the MCEC buildings. And again hosting 55 Australian craft distillers, each with a selection of their best gins, with recommended mixers and garnishes.
Let us know if you'll be there!
Only 3 months after our business launch, we were excited to release Picnic Gin as our second gin expression in October 2021. Thank you to all our new and repeat customers who showed their support in exploring this new recipe. Picnic Gin is a more subtle but complex & floral style of gin, with some of the hero botanicals including elderberry, wormwood, cassia bark, and aniseed myrtle. To us, it is the type of gin to enjoy in the sunshine on a warm day (such as a picnic!), surrounded by sounds and smells of birds and bees going about their business. Perhaps paired with some soft cheese and a selection of anti-pasti spread out on your rug.
Envy Distilling is Nathan and Vanessa (the “N” and “V”), and we actually developed this recipe several years beforehand and it served as our "wedding gin", given out as small sample bottles to our guests as a bonbonerie type gift. It was partly the feedback from this fun experiment with guests that inspired us to launch Envy Distilling, and many of our friends encouraged us to publicly release this gin for others to enjoy.
In connection with our wine-growing community, and like our first product, this gin is also created from a grape-based spirit. Picnic Gin retains a little bit more of the original grape spirit flavour, however, somewhat departing from the usual neutral spirits basis for gin. We think this gives the final gin a more interesting and complex flavour, working well with the botanicals that build on the foundation of a good spirit.
We’re proud of the launch of Picnic Gin, our 2nd gin, and grateful as ever to our supportive and curious customers. We’re always keen to receive your feedback, pictures and cocktail ideas, so keep them coming!
]]>Come see us on the Queen's Birthday long weekend at Heathcote on Show 2022 from 11th-13th June! Enjoy a tasting experience with us at this fabulous rural festival, where there are artisan winemakers, chefs, brewers, and musicians to welcome you across 30 different locations in and around Heathcote, Victoria.
We'll be hosting a pop-up cellar door and tasting at the Heathcote RSL, at 127 High street, Heathcote. Starting in the town centre with us, you'll also find Farmer & The Scientist, Rogues Lane Vineyard and Humis Vineyard. From there, branch out and explore the surrounding region and events, wineries, music performances and all else that makes Heathcote such a lovely part of the Victorian Goldfields. ]]>The Melbourne Gin Festival 2022, held 18-20th March at MCEC, is now over but we had a blast participating in our first public event. We loved meeting fellow Australian distillers and all the enthusiastic guests who came by our stand to sample, recommend and buy our gin over the three event days.
We were astounded at the dedication of the attendees to try and find their way to all 55 exhibitors at the event! And given that each producer has a few different products, that is a lot of gin tasting. We came to the rescue with a huge jar of chocolate-coated coffee beans, to help reset any burned-out palates as well as plenty of water to keep everyone hydrated. Towards the end of each session, some people were clearly struggling to go any further...
It was an awesome feeling to gain a few strong fans on the day, with numerous people coming back, telling their friends to see us, and a number of "best gin of the show" comments. We also learned a lot about our own gins from listening to the various ways people experienced it - lots of tasting notes from lots of different palates and levels of experience with spirits.
We'll be back at next year's event!
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As you know, Envy Distilling is Nathan and Vanessa (the “N” and “V”), and our first gin was named in honour of our neighbours Maria and Soraya. Maria roughly translating to “of the sea”, and Soraya being related to the Arabic name for the Pleiades Star constellation. These women provided lots of input and sample botanicals from their suburban garden (Soraya having been a horticulturalist in the past). These amazing flavours, especially their kaffir lime tree, were the direct inspiration for the flavours in Sea & Stars. We want our business to always be strongly connected to the community around us, and this seemed a perfect time to make good on that principle.
We’ve had lots of great feedback about the look of the label and bottle, and we’re thrilled about that. Credit and kudos to Morgan from Etikette Design for creating our first branding and look. I think your feedback tells us she did an outstanding job!
We’re proud of the launch, of our gin, and grateful to our first customers. We’re always keen to receive your feedback, pictures and cocktail ideas, so keep them coming!
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