“At the beginning, it was like, bars and restaurants are going to close,” Dave says. Rather, Bully Boy is about to expand into another neighboring building. When it’s done fermenting, you end up with what’s essentially a strong beer, and that’s ultimately what we distill.” And then from the fermenter, it goes into the still. And then we pump it into a fermenter, add yeast, and the yeast converts that sugar into alcohol.
Then we use enzymes, malt primarily, to convert that starch into sugar. And the mash tun is steam injected, so you heat that corn up, and eventually the starch in the corn starts to leach out, and so you get this big starchy slurry. Standing inches away from his 750-gallon still, Dave takes us to school: “The process starts in the mash tun, and we get 5,000-pound super sacks of corn and then we auger the corn into the mash tun. So you’re just kind of compressing the alcohol and the mash.” So we take 750 gallons at 7 ABV, and we end up with around 75 gallons at 130 proof. “You’re taking a large volume, and then distilling it down to a smaller volume. “Distilling is exactly what it sounds like,” he says. Nothing supports the mission like being able to see the sights and smell the smells.”Īnd there are sights and smells aplenty, including through the glass window of their speakeasy-esque sipping room. Will, who is head of sales, adds, “We expanded here in 2017, and really the upshot was increasing production by fivefold and adding the on-site tasting bar, which has proven huge not only for the business but also for brand building.
So from a branding perspective, we make our spirits in a geography that’s known nationwide, and in some ways, Boston has even more cache internationally than it does nationally.” “, we have access to a large urban center. It’s less so in the spirits world,” Dave says. “If you’re in the wine world, location is important because of terroir, how the ground affects the flavor. Five days a week, there’s another guy across the street making gin.”Īll together, their location has proven ideal. Dave says of the building that is located across from their current main distillery, “Now that’s barrel storage and we still use that still for gin. Scouting the larger world, in 2010 the Willis brothers landed in a 3,500-square foot facility with a 150-gallon still in Roxbury. We thought that we could elevate to spirits, but he wasn’t having it.” Dave, the head distiller, continues, “The idea was we would have the ingredients right, grow the corn there, etc.