New Still 7/2/2020

New Castle Glen Still – (He/She) we don’t know yet is a beauty!!

Castle Glen Distillery started its life in 2009 (check license).  We invested in a small still and named him “Mr Squiggle”.  By the photo you will see why!

With Mr Squiggle we produced whiskey, rum, bourbon, vodka, gin and many other exciting spirits that Castle Glen Distillery produces today.

Mr Squiggle was a great still – whilst he was not grand, fancy or pretty like stills seen at some distilleries today – Mr Squiggle was functional.  And over time Mr Squiggle made a lot of great spirits – some of which have spent years maturing in Oak barrels getting ready for making their way into a bottle and to our customers abode.  

As Castle Glen Distillery’s award winning products have become more sought after the distillery has had to increase production and our Mr Squiggle has been finding it hard to keep up.  You see Mr Squiggle whilst functional and producing a great product is a little slow, putting pressure on the business to keep up with demand.  Also Mr Squiggle being electric driven - sucking up a lot of power due to the amount of time he needed to run in order to produce spirit.  

Fast forward to 2018 and we realised we needed to produce high quality spirit faster so we could increase production and consume less power in the process.

The new Castle Glen Still idea was borne and months of research began into how to find a still that would meet Castle Glen Distillery’s requirements.

After much time invested we realised we would require a custom built still based on our specific manufacturing needs.  Finding a manufacturer who could design and build the new still was the next mission.  We eventually found a company capable of meeting our stringent requirements and settled on building a 2000L capacity steam driven still.  

We incorporated a whiskey head with two whiskey columns for double distillation, a triple distillation column for pure spirit (Vodka) and we added a Gin basket where we can get creative with fabulous Australian botanicals.  

The still is steam driven and run by the Solar power generated at Castle Glen, with a back-up generator.

Built from 316 stainless steel and 5mm copper (for all of you manufacturing geniuses out there) it is a sight to behold.

The benefits of steam driven vs gas driven is – it won’t blow us up - a gas powered still wouldn’t meet our need to conserve $$$ and energy – gas is expensive in Australia.

Whilst the Still does not take centre stage at Castle Glen – it is a welcome addition to our manufacturing arsenal significantly reducing the time it takes to produce a 200L drum of spirit from 5 days to 5 hours.    

Now we can bring greater volumes of our high-quality brandy and spirits to meet the purchasing demands of our wonderful customers.  

Here is a photo of the new custom built Still now sitting in its new home at Castle Glen.