Wigle Whiskey, Pittsburgh's first distillery since Prohibition, to open soon
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The first Wigle whiskey will be "white" -- clear -- but the Strip District distillery also is putting some into charred oak barrels, which is what gives whiskey its dark color. You can even buy your own small oak barrels and age your Wigle whiskey at home. -
Eric Meyer, left, and his father, Mark, at their Wigle Whiskey distillery on Smallman Street in Pittsburgh's Strip District. -
Mark Meyer adds enzymes to cooking mash at the Wigel Whiskey distillery. -
Mark pours rye grain into the grinder, which will automatically add it to the cooking mash.
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Small-batch whiskey-making, like most creative and entrepreneurial endeavors, is all about heart. More specifically, it's all about "hearts" -- the product of the distillation recipe that emerges after the impure "foreshots" and "heads," and before the "tails." In other words, it's the good stuff -- the sweet spot of the fermentation and stripping undertaking that you'll eventually want to bottle ... and drink.
Father and son duo Mark and Eric Meyer, proprietors of the new Wigle Whiskey distillery in the Strip District, spend their days (and some of their evenings) in pursuit of these hearts. On a table in their warehouse distillery, the copper still's byproducts are in plastic sampler cups, arranged chronologically, in the manner of a high school chemistry project:
Hearts IV, 80.5 percent, 5:03 p.m., CW: 4.5.
Hearts IX, 77 percent, 6:56 p.m., CW: 4.5, SV: 9.
Hearts X, 75 percent ...
PG VIDEOThe numbers are gibberish to most of us (CW stands for "condenser water," while SV stands for "small valve"), but what they mean, in a practical sense, is that the Meyers' experimental phase is drawing to an end, and the owners of the first whiskey distillery within Pittsburgh's city limits since Prohibition are getting that much closer to having products they can sell. The first one, a white, unaged rye whiskey, should be in bottles by the end of this month or the beginning of March, and available for purchase on site.
When that happens, it will mark a new phase in what has already been a two-year planning and construction process. Last month, I met with father and son to discuss the creation of Wigle Whiskey:
Q. What was the most difficult part of the process?
Eric: "I think we estimated the build-out of the space would be done in January 2011. We didn't really finish [it] until August or September. We're really happy that we're rejuvenating an old building in the Strip -- it's a big part of our business, and who we are. But we pretty much had to replace all the infrastructure."
Mark: "For me, everything was harder than we thought it was going to be. There were a lot of regulatory challenges. You have to apply for a license to the federal government, to the state government. ... Although both entities were incredibly cooperative, it's a long process. The licensing with the federal government took six to seven months -- getting your label approved by the federal government took a long time. The build-out was a challenge. Then, just getting used to the equipment takes some time."
First Published February 2, 2012 12:00 am
