Few businesses anymore, or ever, really, can say they got their start with a structure fire, but the people at Stranahan's Colorado Whiskey wear their origins like a merit badge. The story goes like this - Jess Graber, a volunteer firefighter living and working in Woody Creek Colorado, responded to a call about a burning barn in town. The burning barn was a total loss, but through this event, Graber and the barn's owner, local microbrewer George Stranahan, struck up an unlikely friendship based on their mutual affection for whiskey.

Graber had harbored an idea for a new kind of whiskey for some time - not bourbon, nor scotch, nor rye, but a whiskey that was purely unique to Colorado, taking after the long-standing tradition of microscopic-scale bootleg whiskey in the Colorado high country region. Soon after watching his new friend's barn burn to the ground, Graber shared his concept with Stranahan, who arranged with Graber to ferment Graber's unique recipe, and thus, a local legend was born.

It's an origin story more fitting of a novel or a film than a craft distillery, but as unique and unorthodox as itis, it's that selfsame spirit of uniqueness that pervades Stranahan's entire business. The whiskey itself is distilled from one hundred percent Rocky Mountain malted barley, eighty percent of that barley coming from Colorado alone. The water they use is pure spring water, brought in from Colorado's own Eldorado Springs, and the yeast they use is wholly proprietary.

However, this uniqueness extends beyond just being 100 percent locally sourced - their distilling process too is entirely unique. In the distilling process of spirits, there are two most popular and widely used techniques - the pot still and the column still. The pot still is the oldest distilling technique in the world, dating, some claim, as far back as three thousand years ago and is still used to this day to distill Scotch and Irish whiskies. The column still, on the other hand, is commonly held to produce a pure, clean spirit, and is often used to distill bourbon and vodka.

Stranahan's, choosing a third option, has hybridized the pot and column still into their own breed of still, designed to capitalize on the strengths of both styles, built for them by Vendome Copper Works out of Louisville, Kentucky . Stranahan's is the progenitor of this combination style still, and is proud to be the only distillery that uses this specific technique.

"We've heard rumors that other places might be using our design," says Caley Shoemaker, an employee of the distillery, "but we're the only ones who can confirm that we're using it."

Each of the American White Oak barrels Stranahan's age their whiskey in is ordered from World Cooperage Barrel Makers with a Number Three "Alligator" char on the inside (that used by most high-end bourbon distillers), the most intense level of char, in order to bring out the flavors and colors that Stranahan's strives for. Aging their whiskey in their climate-controlled rack house (another touch unique to Stranahan's), SCW combines up to twenty barrels of whiskey aged between two and five years into a single batch to ensure their signature flavor. Using no artificial flavoring and only minimal filtration, each batch results in roughly five thousand bottles per. While this may seem like a good amount of whiskey to the casual ear, Stranahan's makes a point of announcing that a year's worth of output for them is roughly equal to the amount that the Jack Daniel's distillery puts out in just under five hours. Their scale is a point of pride to them. To Stranahan's, their small degree of output, about eighteen barrels a week, is what allows them to exercise such control over the quality of their product.

All of their bottles are filled by a modified six-tap wine bottle filler, nicknamed Charlene, and are corked and labeled by hand, by a rotating cast of volunteers, each of whom are sent home with a bottle of whiskey for their troubles.

Stranahan's is also very welcome to visitors, running tours of their distillery four days out of the week and happy to answer any questions those visitors might have. When one nears the end of the tour, they provide the visitor with a small taste of their whiskey, going so far as to guide their tour groups through the tasting process.

While the craft brewed beer industry in Colorado is certainly booming, Stranahan's Colorado Whiskey Distillery is definitely a rewarding detour off the beaten path, ready to reward the discerning visitor with more than one would expect from a craft distillery. Their staff and whiskey is definitely worth the trip.