Norseman Distillery Tasting

Last Thursday Nate and I had an opportunity to do a unique date night experience.  You all know we're huge beer fans, but a couple of months ago there was a Living Social deal for a craft distillery near us.  It included a tasting, tour, two t-shirts and two glasses to take home.  We thought that sounded interesting even if we aren't as into hard liquor.  The options for the tasting were pretty limited, they offer two sessions on only two Thursday evenings a month.  I thought that seemed kind of odd, but it made sense once we learned more about them!

So, we dropped off Oliver with my parents and headed to Northeast Minneapolis.  Norseman Distillery is located in a warehouse type building.  We parked and headed inside.  As we followed the signs it started to feel like we were heading into a dungeon or something, it was way down in the basement of this old building! We finally found them and were greeted by this:

They had several barrels with bottles out and little glasses and they were pouring samples.  We quickly learned that this is a very small operation - it's a husband and wife team.  They have only been in operation since December and they're doing pretty well so far!  They make gin, vodka and rum and they're working on a whiskey.  We tasted the vodka and gin before heading in for the tour.  I'm not a huge gin fan, but I have to say, theirs is pretty good!

The husband led the tour as he does most of the work for the distillery.  He explained that he originally thought about brewing beer and getting into doing a brewery or something but then realized that there was nothing else like this on the market, so he decided to give it a try.  The response was overwhelming, they sold out of their projected amount of vodka for the year by February.  Slowly they've built up more equipment and are now actually going to be moving to a new space not far from where they are now since they are growing by leaps and bounds.

He explained the distilling process - it is very similar to brewing beer but there are a few more steps involved. Right when it comes out of the distiller it's more or less like moonshine and then you do some other steps to turn it into other types of liquor.  The equipment he has is pretty impressive!

As I mentioned, they pretty much do all the work themselves.  His wife even works full time still, so he ends up putting in some very long days on his own!  I was impressed to hear though that they have their product available in close to 400 liquor stores in Minnesota.  I think that's pretty darn good!

After the tour we were able to taste a little more, they poured their rum for us and also some strawberry rhubarb gin that unfortunately is no longer available for the year.  I think that one was my favorite, I might have even been willing to drink that one straight up!

We had a lot of fun checking out their facility, talking with the owners and tasting their product!  It was a unique experience!  We even stopped at the liquor store before we picked up Oliver to buy a bottle of their gin (Nate does like a good martini every now and then) and a bottle of their vodka to keep on hand. It's nice to support local businesses whenever possible!  I'd definitely recommend them to any of you local types out there!