We recently connected with Austin Adamson and have shared our conversation below.
Austin, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.
The idea for Ballmer Peak Distillery came after a full day of drinking at various breweries around the Golden, Colorado area. Our last stop of the night was at Golden Moon Speakeasy– a distillery tasting room and that is where my business partner, Eric, and I had our eureka moment. We loved the craft beer scene in Colorado, but even in 2014 we recognized that the beer market was becoming over saturated. We thought to ourselves: “we love cocktails, craft spirits and whiskey… what if we did something like this; make a physical product to share with the world and become our own bosses…” From there we spent hours and hours trying to figure out how to make it work and over the 5 following years tweaked and grew our business plan. We knew we wanted to make delicious, quality spirits that were inspired by worldwide flavors and processes while trying to keep raw materials sourced close to home.
Austin, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I’ve been passionate about alcohol, and specifically spirits, at the earliest possible, legal age. It really started when I turned 21 and would hit up my local big-box liquor store, overwhelmed with the all of the offerings from across the country, and even the world. I would read about the different products and start buying as many new and interesting styles and flavors as I could afford. Once I found a large selection that I enjoyed I started modifying those spirits. I’d take a good neutral spirit, and incorporate different flavors into them. Making spiced versions, coffee versions, fruited versions and anything else that sounded delicious. I’d start bringing these experiments to gatherings to get feedback and new ideas, never realizing that making my own spirits would ever be in the cards. It wouldn’t be til years later I started some small batch, hobby distilling to learn the actual processes, and learning a larger scale of production by working for Denver Distillery during the build out of Ballmer Peak. What sets us apart from others is our drive to create something of a high caliber, and still keep it affordable. We craft all of our spirits with the goal to have them be enjoyable in any manner, starting with base spirit that can be sipped on. We want to bring internationally inspired flavors, concepts and recipes available to our local level, and we want to do everything with a sustainable focus at our core. We reuse water, divert waste streams for repurposing and incorporate the waste products of others into our products and processes.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
Our biggest pivots come from the pandemic restrictions forcing our hand. In March of 2020, after being open to the public for 30 days, we were forced to close our tasting room for on-premise cocktails, which at the time was over 90% of our revenue. Because of that we had to think of other ways to let folks know we existed. We saw the writing on the wall with the toilet paper shortages and the panic buying that folks were doing and we realized we had a way to calm some of that panic and disrupt the people looking to capitalize on said shortages. We started making hand sanitizer and giving it out for free to our community, and anyone who showed up to our distillery. While my friends and family had started working from home, and getting into making sour dough bread, I started working 14+ hour days, six days a week to ensure we had enough hand sanitizer to meet demand, and enough spirits to sell in bottles. We were picked up by several local news outlets, and had lines around the building as folks drove for hours to get some of our free sanitizer. Instead of selling it we asked them to buy some of our spirits, make a donation to help cover costs or just come back when we could sell them a cocktail. We had to pivot many times after that, but the first few months hand sanitizer really kicked it of and highlighted the importance of being able to shift direction quickly.
Okay – so how did you figure out the manufacturing part? Did you have prior experience?
We craft our spirits from grain and cane to glass. When we initially had the plan to start our own distillery we had no idea how to mash, ferment or distill. We started with self taught, and general passion and curiosity for the processes. When I was in my 20s it was just a fun excuse to go on a brewery or distillery tour, or to buy a new product I had never tasted or seen to learn more about the industry and different possibilities. “I need to go to this distillery and drink their products for an evening for market research” type of statements were said quite frequently, and truth be told it was a very beneficial process. Consuming with a curious mind had me asking questions, exploring possibilities and figuring out what I thought would be good or bad and learn what places were and weren’t doing. After a few years of that and building out the business plan we found our location in Lakewood, that’s when things stated getting serious. I moved to Denver to live with my business partner, Eric, and got a job in the distilling world. I stated as an assistant distiller for Denver Distillery, took over for their head distiller when he left and trained my replacement in the span of about 18 months while we were building out Ballmer Peak. Through that time I learned how to mash, ferment and distill at a similar scale to what we had planned out for our own distillery. It was an invaluable experience, as I was thrown into the deep end of things multiple times and learned so much by doing. Some of the biggest lessons I learned involved making messes. When making spirits, you’re gonna make messes, and therefore you clean up a lot of messes. Learning to be deliberate in how you make your messes, and how you clean them up is important. I learned to be good at making the right kind of messes and how to avoid messes that take days to clean up.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://ballmerpeakdistillery.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ballmerpeakdistillery/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BallmerPeakDistillery/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/apadamson/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/ballmerpeakco
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/ballmer-peak-distillery-lakewood
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@ballmerpeakdistillery