Day: April 5, 2022

Q: What is a Moonshiner’s favorite Christmas hymn? A: Still, Still, Still.

After two of our prolific persimmon trees were broken over the winter of 2019, they began producing fruit again this year! As you see from the first picture, we also had to battle Japanese beetles and tent caterpillars! These juicy cold-hardy persimmons produce a mild orange flavor as well as an orange colored infusion. We …

2021 Meader Persimmons are back! Read More »

In the last week of September, our pawpaws began to fall from their trees, heralding the start of the harvest! This was an amazing year for our trees, with the largest fruits grown to date. Some of our grafted trees that bore great fruit were the NC-1, Overlees, Potomac, Sunflower, and Susquehanna. After enjoying a …

The 2021 Pawpaw Harvest! Read More »

Last week, we were very excited to meet Ms. Deanna Fox, a food and agriculture journalist with the Times Union! She visited one of our pawpaw “patches” here in Canajoharie that was teeming with ripe fruit! We had fun doing a tasting and discussing this wonderful fruit that is the centerpiece of our product line: …

Times Union Article – Growing Pawpaws in Canajoharie Read More »

Mohawk Spirits was extremely honored to present its grant research results at the 2021 ADI Annual Conference in Louisville, Kentucky, August 23-26. 2021. Dr. Eric Stroud gave his talk on Tuesday morning on the Expo Floor stage on “Esoteric Distilling: Reconstructing Stills from the 16-18th Centuries”. Some highlights from the week are below:     …

ADI 2021 Annual Conference – Louisville KY Read More »

We are very excited to announced that our famed Pawpaw Liqueur has won a Gold Medal in the 2021 MLSA Competition! This product is made from real pawpaw fruit (Asimina tribola) that we grow here in the Mohawk Valley!

Please tune in and check out the amazing Modern Barcart podcast with the erudite host Eric Kozlik and his interview with me on ancient stills with some fun discussions on history, vacuum distillation, and cocktails!

We have been busy during Covid-19 building new stills with our ADI grant! As I write this, three stills have been built, and one more is designed. We will be publishing photographs and preliminary data at our showcase site: Nanodistilling.com  Check it out!   At the farm, pawpaws, mayhaws, and a variety of berries are …

Harvest Time 2020! Read More »

And yet another antique store find! This is a standard hydrometer, 0.700 – 1.000 density, made of glass as usual. What is unusual is that the weight uses elemental mercury metal instead of the usual beads. God helped the distiller who dropped this one a little too hard into their mash or wash!

Another antique store find! This is a Gay-Lussac brand glass “Alcoometre”  for 90-100 proof. There are some printed and some typed content in both English and French on the hydrometer inserts, one of which is “1884”. The previous user placed a painted dot above the 90 proof mark, and I wonder if this was used …

Vintage Gay-Lussac Hydrometer Read More »

We have received three small barrels made in Romania that are constructed from mulberry wood. We are going to be aging a New York apple brandy in these barrels, a first in NY state! Mulberry wood is often used for aging plum and pálinka. When we experimented with mulberry sticks, the color imparted is a …

Mulberry Wood Barrels from Romania Read More »

Here is a picture of some of our 2019 harvest of New York grown Pawpaws (Asimina tribola)! Drip irrigation greatly improved our fruit yield and size in one orchard this year, so we will be expanding that in 2020. These fruits will be used in our internationally awarded pawpaw liqueur!  

We found this gem in an antique store in Pennsylvania. This is a glass alcohol proof hydrometer from the US Customs Office. The temperature corrections and rules are handwritten! It is fun to ponder how this unit was calibrated and sealed, and the time and expense of creating it. One may also wonder if this …

Historic US Customs Alcohol Hydrometer Read More »

Santa was very good to Mohawk Spirits Distillery this Christmastide, and we received a wonderful new Anton-Paar Snap 41 meter! This handheld meter provides a temperature-corrected % alcohol value within seconds using just a few millimeters of sample. We highly recommend this device!    

Mohawk Spirits Distillery wins Gold in The Fifty Best “Best Liqueur” 2019 judging! Press release follows: New York, NY, (October 14, 2019) – The Fifty Best has once again shined the spotlight on liqueur.  The Fifty Best recently hosted a liqueur tasting where contenders were evaluated for the distinguished “Best Liqueur” awards for 2019.   …

MSD wins Gold – The Fifty Best Read More »

Some rarer fruits here in upstate New York are now reaching ripeness at the orchard, so we’d like to share some pictures of what is possible after 3 winters in Zone 5a: Aronia  Melanocarpa – We have a whole row of trees full of fruit this August. This Viking and Nero cross-species produces berries that …

Lots of Rare Fruits in New York Read More »

We are pleased to  announce that our PawPaw Liqueur has won Bronze at the 2019 Finger Lakes International Wine Competition! This product has now spanned Bronze to Double Gold across multiple international judgings. As we post this, our pawpaw trees have awakened from the winter and are about to start flowering for the new season.

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MSD wins Double Gold and Silver at Denver! Read More »

Mohawk Spirits will be attending and presenting “Unconventional distilling techniques and advances” at the annual NYSDG meeting. We hope to catch up with all of the fantastic distillers in NY there! Please check out the NYSDG website as well.

Our farm has a number of ancient crab apple trees, producing both golden yellow and deep red fruits on different trees. The name might be off-putting or suspicious, but these little fruits are delicious, semi-tart crunchy apples! We picked buckets full to try some pressing and cider work.    

In 2018, we planted two medlar trees (Breda varietal), and we were lucky enough to have fruit in the first year! The picture below shows what a medlar fruit looks like. The fruit, after harvesting, needs to blet (cold cure) and then it will soften. The taste is similar to apple sauce. We only had …

The Giant Medlar (Mespilus germanica) Read More »

We had a wonderful harvest of Meader persimmons, aronia, crab apples and a few medlars. The pawpaws were a bit small, and that is probably because of so much rain and not much sun this year. These persimmons are delicious when ripe and bletted (need time in the cold). Stay tuned in 2019 for a …

Persimmons are in for 2018! Read More »

The 2018 season for pawpaws is looking positive so far! Three trees so far were successfully pollinated (naturally) and miniature fruits are now visible. These trees will get a lot of TLC this summer to ensure a good yield for our award-winning pawpaw liqueur!    

We are very excited about winning the Silver Medal in the Liqueurs category of the American Distilling Institute’s International Judging of Craft Spirits.  Our Pawpaw liqueur won the medal! We grow this amazing native fruit here in New York, which is made into a tropical-tasting liqueur with banana, apple, and caramel notes.    

We just finished producing our first run of Aronia Liqueur, just in time for entry to the American Distilling Institute’s International Judging of Craft Spirits for 2018. This liqueur is made from the black chokeberry, harvested here in upstate New York by hand. It takes a LOT of berries to make enough to process into …

Aronia Liqueur and a Volumetric Bottle ! Read More »

Our aronia berries and Meader persimmons are starting to ripen now! Aronia (aronia spp.) are also known as chokeberries, and at our orchard they are abundant on bushes and trees. Although the berries turn purple to black and sometimes red in the late summer, they are not ripe until the colder weather begins to set …

Aronia and Persimmons Read More »

In case you have never seen one, here is a very large 71/60 SGI liquid-dividing head. The silvering has been removed in this unit from a repair, which allows even more of the intricate glassblowing work to be seen. This head sits on top of a tall glass perforated plate Oldershaw column, and the entire …

Magnetic liquid dividing distillation head Read More »

Here are some great diagrams of laboratory to pilot scale condensers. Some of these are custom built and are rarely seen in use! We would love to see an actual picture of a Bruun!   Left to Right: Vigreux or Vigreaux (SGI). Glass indentations and drip tips along the column length. Mostly useless for spirits …

Know your condensers! Read More »

Here are pictures (courtesy of SGI) of liquid-dividing and vapor-dividing glass distillation heads. We own both types, however, at Mohawk Spirits, we prefer the liquid-dividing head (liquid management distillation).  We use a large 71/60 head, similar to the one at left below, at the top of a vacuum-jacketed silvered perforated plate column. Left: Liquid dividing …

Know your dividing heads! Read More »

We just picked up about 300 pounds of fresh strawberries today! These beautiful fruits were hand-picked, de-topped, and washed in Stone Arabia, NY and transported back to the distillery. On the first day, we already pressed 70 pounds for juice. This year’s strawberry brix is, on average, 5.5, which is tarter than last year’s 8.0-9.2 …

2017 Strawberry Harvest is in! Read More »

Our New York Pawpaw farm is doing well, and getting a lot of rain and sun this year so far. One tree has 11 fruit on it alone! Some trees are mature, others are seedlings in tree tubes. All indications so far point to a fantastic yield for apples, bayberries, aronia, and pawpaws! Attached are …

Pawpaw Farm and Fruit Read More »

Eric from Mohawk Spirits was able to attend the international pawpaw conference at Kentucky State University, which was also the  100th anniversary of the 1916 American Genetics Best Pawpaw Contest! Attendees hailed from all over the world, and many interesting presentations and hands-on demonstrations were enjoyed. Below are the generally-recognized pawpaw “celebrities”, luminaries, and leading …

International Pawpaw Conference at Frankfort, KY Read More »

Last year, we cleaned and saved about 80 pounds of pawpaw seeds, from specimens in New York, New Jersey, and Rhode Island. All of the seeds were cold-stratified over the long winter in damp soil. We set up 200 deep cone planters this spring with stratified seed, and waited. Today, we checked a few containers …

Our Pawpaws have germinated! Read More »

2015 ended in the coolest way when our 200L glass reactor arrived safety by freigh this afternoon. This beautiful piece of glassware (a chemist’s dream!) is made by QVF, and is typically a process or pilot plant item. The glass reactor sits in a hemispherical heating mantle. Finding chemical glassware of this size at surplus …

The 200L Glass Pot Arrives Read More »

Today, we returned to one of our favorite wild pawpaw patches in western New York and found hundreds of beautiful purple flowers! The flowers have opened before the leaves appeared. The beautiful flowers are the same rich red-purple color of many of the flowers of the Amorphophallus ‘corpse’ flowers, and there is even a resemblence …

2016 Pawpaw Tree Buds Read More »

Mohawk Spirits Distillery won a Silver Medal for its Strawberry Liqueur at the 2017 ADI Judging of Craft Spirits, and international judging competition. Our strawberry liqueur is made from strawberries grown in nearby Stone Arabia, New York, hand-picked, and hand de-topped.

Eric was able to attend the Delaware Pawpaw Festival in Wilmington, DE at Alapocas State Park. There, he met with Dr. Ron Powell, president of the North American Pawpaw Growers Association (NAPGA), as well as the Ohio Pawpaw Growers Association. Mohawk Spirits, as a grower, is now a member of NAPGA and also picked up …

Delaware Pawpaw Festival Read More »

This gem was a highly efficient pilot-scale condenser, made by Adams-Chittenden. It was found online and was to be a great addition to our 200L pot as the primary condenser. Unfortunately, those internal cooling coils are subject to vibration damage, and snapped off internally in transit. The exterior glass shell remained intact. There is no …

Wrecked Condenser! Read More »

Mohawk Spirits is now a proud member of the North American Pawpaw Growers Association (NAPGA). We have a nursery containing 293 seedlings and 12 semi-mature trees of 8 varietals. As producers of pawpaw liqueur, we are very committed to establishing the pawpaw in central New York and expanding its popularity here.

Mohawk Spirits has just secured it first 150 pounds of organic strawberries from the Dutch Barn Farm in Stone Arabia! Most of these strawberries will be processed and fermented for distilling later. They are incredibly tart and sweet and bright red, perfect specimens for our strawberry liqueur, debuting later this year.  

Our nursery of pawpaw trees has awakened from the long winter, with all trees now showing signs of buds and leaves. We have 8 species of pawpaw near the distillery, but none flowered this year.

Mohawk Spirits Distillery has joined the American Distilling Institute. “The American Distilling Institute (ADI) is the oldest and largest organization of small-batch, independently-owned distillers in the United States. Founded in 2003 by Bill Owens, the organization has grown from a few dozen distillers to more than 1,000 paid members. In 2015, more than 1,500 people …

MSD Joins American Distilling Institute Read More »