Whisky Making Experience

Craft your own Whisky

Craft your own single malt whisky from 100% barley.

Our approach marries the Occasional Brewers artisanal brewing culture with New Zealand’s unique legal framework to allow you to create an exquisite whisky from scratch. 

Our malt blend will create caramel and brown sugar notes, complimented by smoky peated malt.

You do the blending, so it will be a whisky that is uniquely yours.  Just like our brewing, no experience is needed. 

Brew the mash with us. Ferment with us. Distil at home.

How it works:

• Book in to make your whisky mash. 

• Come and join us at the OB for a night of brewing. (three to four hours)  You will make a very strong simple beer using our blend of malts. As always you can bring two people with you, friends or family, to brew the beer.

• While your wort is boiling, we will demonstrate how to operate our copper alembic dome pot stills. This traditional approach using copper is perfect for catalysing the congeners (flavours) from your malts. 

• Leave your mash to ferment with us for eight to ten days. If your schedule demands it, the wash will safely wait for up to three weeks before you should be distilling.

• Collect the still from the OB. At this point, you will need to siphon your wash into a food-safe jerry can. This may take up to 15mins. 

• Distillation is quite simple but, like all good things, takes time. 

• You will need access to a laundry tap or garden tap for the distillation. We do have tap fitting adapters.

• The overall process takes around six hours. You will have the still for at least two days to give you time. You may want to break the process up into two sessions.

• Get your family and friends around to enjoy the alchemy too. Do the first distillation (stripping run) one day and the second distillation (spirits run) the next. 

• Once the spirits run is complete it is time to taste and blend the distillate. Once you are satisfied with the blend, dilute it down to between 40 to 60% ABV.

• Return the still while your creation ages on an oak spiral. 

What does it cost and how much whisky do I get?

The full experience costs $179. We’ll loan you a five-litre glass demijohn for the distillation. If you want to keep it, flick us an easy 20 bucks. 

The final volume of whisky depends on several factors such as how much distillate you choose to blend into your whisky and the final ABV you choose, but you should expect between three and a half and five litres of liquid gold.

If you are interested in experiencing what few others in the world ever will follow the link below.

Book Here