Thursday, November 5, 2009

New Distillery in Nebraska - No, another one.

So here I thought Zac at Solas was going to be the first distillery open in Nebraska since Prohibition by a landslide, but apparently someone else has been working on getting one going in the meantime.

Cooper Chase Vodka



The article claims that they are the first distillery to be licensed in the state since prohibition but if I recall I thought the guys over at Solas(Lucky Bucket) have been licensed just have not started producing. We are talking semantics but if you are going to market something this way you better be accurate. I will let Zac and the gang answer this one because I honestly don't know.

I do think this is very cool and the distillery's really couldn't be more different from the sounds of it. The owners of Chase are trained in the American art of moonshining and have taken to the legal side of production. Then you have Zac who is classically trained in the art and science in Scotland, I believe, and has a custom built setup.

I want to be clear, one is not better than the other and I don't mean to hint in anyway that that is the case. I think this is a classic example of the many ways to skin a cat and both of them can work very effectively. The down homey, you can do this in your backyard nature of what the Chase guys are doing is an interesting story as well is the techinical science and history of what Zac will be doing.

Bottomline, Nebraska can support both, both have a niche. Now, who's on first???

3 comments:

nickspies said...

Interesting...I'm very curious to know the answer. Also, I am curious to know if Zac and Jason knew about this operation before, during, or after they went to the Nebraska Legislator....or maybe this is the first they heard of it altogether.

On a different note, it seemed like the article had some items in the process wrong. Like calling the liquid 'wort' after it was fermented. I believe distillers call this beer, just like us brewers do.

Nate B. said...

I am with Nick, by looking at their set up it could have easily happened after they went to the legislature because there stuff looks pretty homemade and would not have taken long to put together. Where as Zac has been waiting for awhile for his system to arrive from over seas and getting the facility up and running. Two completely different operations. I am guessing that Zac had his license first though, just didn't get stuff out the door first.

Zac, what say you??

JEBCo said...

Solas did all the legislative work and applied for thier license first. License approval has to wait for you still to be operating. Coopers applied later but got approval about 2 weeks before Solas. http://www.lcc.ne.gov/license_search/licsearch.cgi
Saying you're first only carries so much marketing weight - it's what you put in the bottle that matters.