Distilling a craft

Phillip Mundt was recently appointed as head distiller and production manager at Brush Creek Distillery in Carbon County. Mundt comes to the distillery from Colorado where he worked at Stranahan's Colorado Whiskey. Starting out as a distiller, for six years he was production manager.

Mundt grew up in Evergreen, Colorado. He studied international relations at a university in Switzerland and received his masters in management at a school in Scotland.

"All of those travels allowed me to try a lot of duty free whiskey," Mundt said. "I got to try a lot of good stuff and it made me interested in this industry."

Mundt went to Washington D.C. and managed a huge beer establishment for several years. Deciding he wanted to work in production, Mundt moved to North Carolina and found a job with Mother Earth Brewing. It is there he got his fermentation background. His next move was back to Colorado where he got a job as a distiller at Stranahan's. It was North America's largest single malt facility at the time.

"At least it was when I left," Mundt said. "Within a year I was production manager with a staff of 20 distillers, brewers and engineers. I did that for six years."

Mundt is not the only new addition to the distillery team. Joe Kavanagh has recently come on board to serve as Mundt's assistant.

"I was born in Los Angeles," Kavananagh said. "I became involved the culinary field and did that for eight or nine years, but the whole time I had serious interest in craft beers and spirits. So I moved to Door County in Wisconsin and learned to brew there by Rich Zelke (current brew master at Snowy Mountain Brewery). From there I went to Mother Earth Brewing and met Philip there."

Kavanagh went back to Wisconsin to take over Zelke's position when his mentor came to Saratoga to work. Old Nation Brewing in Michigan hired him to be head brewer. He did that for three years until Mundt called him to come to Brush Creek Distillery.

Andrew Wason, managing director of the distillery, wanted the production manager to be well versed in distilling and brewery operations. Mundt and Kavanagh fill the bill.

Brush Creek products are sold in Wyoming, Texas, Colorado and will soon be in the markets of Indiana and Kentucky.

Two other new additions to personnel to the distillery are Dylan Therrian and Cooper Flamm.

The newest worker, Flamm, has been with the distillery a little over a month. He helps with bottling and labeling.

Flamm got the job from his connection to Therrian. Both knew each other from Reading, Pennsylvania.

Therrian has actually worked part-time with the distillery while working for Brush Creek Ranch for over a year. Therrian has several culinary degrees.

"I started at Brush Creek a year ago and I was a full-time chef and I worked part-time in the distillery," Therrian said. "I have been cooking since I was 15 but, when they offered me the assistant distiller job, I jumped on it. It is good to learn about more about the industry I am in."

The distillery and Brush Creek Ranch are two different entities although they share a strong symbiotic relationship.

The gin is an excellent example how the two work together.

"Our gin is a new American style gin," Mundt said. "Traditionally there are two types of style gin. One is maceration (herbs and fruit soaking in alcohol) and one has you take the vapor for product. Brush Creek Gin is redistilled using a combination of boil and vapor infusion in a 250 gallon Vendome copper pot still."

The Brush Creek gin has 10 botanicals that flavor it. The juniper berries are picked from the local region.

"It is really cool that this area has so much juniper for us to use," Mundt said. "Then we have the greenhouse that we get a lot of our botanicals. It makes our gin quite special."

The gin and vodka is made on site, as are batches of whiskey. The whiskey however won't be ready to bottle for around four years.

The bottles of Brush Creek bourbon and rye that are currently available for purchase are crafted from barrels of different whiskies. Mundt said that mixing the whiskies together is an art and why they are considered crafted whiskies.

"We buy those barrels and put them in the barn and then later bring different whiskies together for a blend," Mundt said. "A blend has a bad connotation in the U.S. but, in most of the world, it is a very well respected product. You go to Scotland and there are master blenders that literally select barrels to make quite literally some of the best whiskey in the world and come up with best tasting whiskey profiles."

Mundt said that is what the distillery is emulating in their process to make world class bourbons and ryes.

"There is a whole craft to the blend," Mundt said. "If you are tasting individual barrels and going through the whole process of cutting them, the skill set is totally different from fermentation and distillation. You are literally going through a sensory profile of each barrel and deciding which barrels can work together to make a batch."

Mundt is proud of his products that come from this process.

"I think these products stand alone in their quality because of the labor of love we put into the selection for taste," Mundt said." We will hopefully continue to do this process even after we have our ranch whiskey."

The epitome of this crafting is the craft process in Founders Reserve Series One.

"This was actually introduced in December of 2020," Wason said. "Our Founders Reserve is a tribute to the ranch itself. The ranch was purchased 12 years ago in December so, for that reason, we have picked out from our collection of barrels a 12 and a 13 year old blend. It is a nod to the purchase of the ranch 12 years ago. It is a very special product. The packaging and whiskey is a true labor of love. There were only 50 of these."

There will be a Founders Reserve Series Two in the future, proving making craft whiskey is truly an art and a labor of love at Brush Creek Distillery.