East all the way across Wyoming

On Friday, we headed east all the way across Wyoming -- about 400 miles -- a long one-day drive for us!

Views while driving -- we saw a lot of pasture land with sheep, cattle, horses, and some antelope (we're think the antelope were wild).

Lots of snow fencing in the fields along the interstate

View from the rest area where we stopped for lunch

Gracie amongst the trucks...

We stopped for the night at Pine Bluffs Distillery at the far eastern end of Wyoming (Pine Bluffs, Wyoming) -- this is a mural wall inside their serving and bar area.

A view of the transfer piping -- "Chain-Vey" - you may be able to see the chain and disk inside that piping.

The source of the Chain-Vey (like "convey with a chain") system

The system that cleans the grain (screens are used to clean). All of the grain used in producing their product is grown within 23 miles of the distillery. They used to say that all of the grain was produced in Wyoming, but one of their farmers has a corn field that is within a mile of the distillery, but partly in Nebraska (the border is that close), so now they say the grain is grown within 23 miles, mostly in Wyoming!

Finished product in boxes (the order of the pictures which is the order of the tour isn't consistent with the order of the process)

Malted grain - they use their own malted grain, but they also malt for others (e.g. State of New Mexico) and sell the malted grain that they produce.

I didn't understand *all* of this, but... they malt the rye, wheat, triticale, and barley. An interesting point is that the rye, wheat, and triticale produce only a single malt product, but barley can create many different types (pale, dark, pilsner, and about 15 others) depending on the temperature used in the drying process. Just a different of a few degrees temperature difference in the drying can make a difference in the resultant product. Only barley has this characteristic.

During the malting process, the grains are germinated - he wants the grains to have roots a little longer than the length of the grain.

This is a dark malk - we were able to taste it (and also a pale) - they both tasted like they would be good in granola!

The drums in which the grain is malted and dried. During the malting process, the drums are turned on a regular basis (2 turns every 4 hours on average) to ensure all the grains are kept evenly moist.

This container was used before the drums - to wet the grains for 2 days to start the germination process.

On our way to the alcohol production area, we passed where the product is aging.

Oak barrels for aging

My remembering may not be accurate, but this is what we think we heard: In the silver container the "mash" of grain and liquid ultimately creates the alcohol that is taken off as liquid -- the remaining grain is used to feed farm animals. Each alcohol is created from a mixture of different grains -- corn plus different combinations of the others. Corn is not malted (malting does not change the properties of corn as it does the others).

The distillers

The fermenters where the starch -- yeast -- is added before going to the distiller.

The barrels are burned on the inside. Bourbon can only be created in barrels which have not been used for aging anything else. The second use of the barrel with the same grain ingredients would create whiskey. This picture shows two staves - the one on the left is the common way that staves would be made with grooves cut in, the other is made by a company in Minnesota that puts honeycomb holes in the stave - giving more surface area for the alcohol to encounter the oak. Both are burned on the inside which is necessary for the aging of the bourbon (first use) or whiskey. Vodka is produced in a similar way but not aged.

Labels of all the products they have made here, including on the top center left Hand Sanitizer, which they made last year during the height of the pandemic. He shared that they actually discovered a better way to make their vodka through the process that they went through to make the hand sanitizer.

He also told us about a limited single barrel offering that they had made available earlier this year -- they would bottle a limited number of bottles from a single barrel of whiskey -- and they were numbered. The first 50 people who showed up on the morning of the offering got to choose which bottle number they wanted, from 1-50. There were a total of less than 300 bottles produced. The people who got any of the bottles are then able to come back next year when they will bottle from another single barrel from the same batch of product -- and so on for 12 years. So, the guy who got bottle #1 from the offering can come back next year, and the year after that, and the year after that, and get bottle #1 from each batch. The first year (this year) the whiskey was aged in the barrel just 1 year, but next year it will be aged 2 years (same original batch, put into a different barrel, continuing to age after barrel #1 was bottled out). Eventually, the whiskey in the last year will have aged 12 years in its barrel. The guy who was on the tour with us was intrigued by this, so he asked if there were any of those bottles left, and there was one -- #245 -- so he got it. I think since he bought this one, he is eligible to come back and get one each year, though, since he wasn't one of the first 50, he won't be guaranteed to get #245 each year (we discussed that and there is really no difference between bottle #1 and #245 or #270, the difference is in the whiskey aged 1 year versus 2 years versus 12 years). Our guide told us that they generally age the whiskey in two years.

The front of the bottle - I like interesting bottle shapes...

This is our fourth Harvest Host location. We have found each one to be interesting!

More information here: https://www.pinebluffsdistilling.com/