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ROB SOUTH: Michigan’s wineries and micro-breweries
have seen considerable growth over the past decade. Now, Michigan distillers are starting
to show up on the scene as well. Michigan State University, with the cooperation of
the Michigan Brewing Company, is helping new spirit makers get started.
KRIS BERGLUND: Well, basically, we’re able to make essentially
any distilled spirit that you can name, and that means whiskey, rum, brandy, any type
of ***, absinthe if you want, gin—we do all those different types of product. So we
have a selection of stills that let us do that.
We’re the only academically based program in the United States that has stills of this
size that operate under commercial licenses. And so there’s this sort of, catch 22 for
new people entering the field, where they’re not allowed to do anything because you cannot
just distill any spirits whatsoever without a license. There’s no personal exclusion
like there is for beer and wine. And so in order to produce your product you have to
have a license: in order to have the license you have to have a distillery. So how do you
ever develop a product to show your investors and the bank, anybody else—that you know
how to do that?
SOUTH: So, Berglund says the distilled beverage technology
lab takes an entrepreneur’s ideas and turns it into a marketable product.
BERGLUND: Well we had one company we worked with that
just came in and had the idea they wanted to make a ***. We said, “what ***?”
and they said, “We don’t know.” So, I felt a little bit like Dorothy and the broom
here, so we sent them off on a quest and we said: “Go to a liquor store, and buy, you
know, five or eight different vodkas, taste them all, and tell us what you’d like yours
to be most like, because there’s a wide range of things.” And when they told us,
then we said, “Well okay, if we want to do that the thing that probably makes the
most sense is something like wheat. But in that case, when they first came in, they didn’t
have the slightest idea.
SOUTH: Berglund and his team can make between 5,000
and 10,000 cases of spirits a year which lets the start-ups get a foot in the door, before
they have to invest in the equipment themselves. He says he gets several calls a week from
potential micro distillers.
BERGLUND: We have 15 projects underway right now here
so far this year. Most of them are in Michigan. So we feel like we’ve been a really big
resource for both the state and particularly the whole United States even in that respect.
We get requests for assistance from all over the country, and actually provinces of Canada
as well.
SOUTH: For WKAR Public Media, I’m Rob South with
reWorking Michigan.