Engineered Spirits

Engineered Spirits. Hand-crafted for your enjoyment. Sit a spell.

[Engineered Spirits @EngineerdSpirit]

S&S gave us one of the staves they’d cut from our logs to bring home as a display piece at the distillery. Head distiller and owner James Moore seems pretty darn pleased with it. Another step toward our goal: our #JimmmyRedcorn, our #springwater, our #whiteoak, 100% our #whiskey.

[Engineered Spirits @EngineerdSpirit]

Chip said it was a dry wine and it turns out he was right on the money! A ph of 3.2 is pretty low, but not down to the level of vinegar. Thank goodness! We tend to like drier wines, so it seems like we bottled this one right on time.

[Engineered Spirits @EngineerdSpirit]

Now, to the most important step! It's time to taste the wine we made from last year's crop of peaches grown #downonthefarm.

[Engineered Spirits @EngineerdSpirit]

We don't really drink much coffee, but we have these extra coffee filters around for our guests. Turns out, they're really useful for filtering out the last bits of yeast and fruit from our homegrown peach wine.

[Engineered Spirits @EngineerdSpirit]

We made this wine from peaches grown #downonthefarm quite a while back, so this weekend we decided it was time to taste it and bottle it. But is it still wine, or has it turned into vinegar? That's the question we're about to answer today.

[Engineered Spirits @EngineerdSpirit]

Since we discovered two different native Clematis species #downonthefarm, we've begun adding other native species of Clematis in the picnic area. But today is the first time we've actually seen any of them bloom. #wildflowers

[Engineered Spirits @EngineerdSpirit]

We set a reminder to ensure we check on our mini barrels every two weeks. Even when we aren’t using them to age spirits, we keep them full of water so the white oak staves won’t dry out. If we don’t do this, the staves shrink, the steel bands loosen, and the barrels fall apart.

[Engineered Spirits @EngineerdSpirit]

See that sap coming out of our peaches? That's insect damage. This particular tree gave us loads of peaches last year, but this year we only have a few, thanks to a late spring frost. Between that and the insects, we're not counting on this tree to produce a big crop this year.

[Engineered Spirits @EngineerdSpirit]

There just wasn't enough time today for a thorough search for artifacts where Papa's workshop used to be and most of our finds were scrap. But there was at least one little treasure worth saving before it’s lost under the foundations of our #distillery.

[Engineered Spirits @EngineerdSpirit]

It's been about a month since Papa's workshop was removed #downonthefarm, but, now that we've finally had a lot of rain, it's a very good time to look around a bit and see what other artifacts might have washed out of the dirt that’s going to be under our #distillery building.

[Engineered Spirits @EngineerdSpirit]

We've foraged for plenty of wild berries before, but we'd never grown #blueberries until a few years ago. Here we share our method for making sure the ones we pick are fully ripe.

[Engineered Spirits @EngineerdSpirit]

The pulp of the wild persimmons coming out of the chinois looks almost like persimmon butter! The nice thing is, it keeps all the seeds intact, so we can gather those up and replant them to get more persimmons #downonthefarm.

[Engineered Spirits @EngineerdSpirit]

So far, it's taken a lot of time and patience to process wild persimmons this way, but far less time and frustration than when we were trying to do this with the food mill!

[Engineered Spirits @EngineerdSpirit]

We have over 20 gallons of native persimmons in our freezer from last fall's bumper crop #downonthefarm. It's past time to turn them into pulp, so today we're trying a different tool to speed up the process.

[Engineered Spirits @EngineerdSpirit]

We planted these native Southern Blue Flag irises #downonthefarm several years ago. They like spots with plenty of moisture and sunlight, so we planted them where the water flowing underground from the springhouse seeps back to the surface at the western end of the picnic area.

[Engineered Spirits @EngineerdSpirit]

Establishing new native #wildflowers in the picnic area #downonthefarm has had its challenges, but it's a delight when we can celebrate a success. Check out these Michigan Lily plants - we might even get a flower this year!

[Engineered Spirits @EngineerdSpirit]

We think one reason our strawberry wine turns out so well is the way we process the berries. Instead of putting them all in a big Ziploc all mushed together, we spread them out in a pan to freeze separately. Then, when they're frozen solid, we bag them up together. No juice lost.

[Engineered Spirits @EngineerdSpirit]

Among the artifacts we salvaged from Papa’s workshop were his wooden boxes. Some had originally been cheese boxes, others were shipping crates, but he had retrofitted them with labels, knobs and numbers to organize spare parts, nuts and bolts. We've salvaged quite a few of these.

[Engineered Spirits @EngineerdSpirit]

Second Intention Farm is proud of its heirloom irises, so we wanted to end the week by showing off these that are growing right by the springhouse #downonthefarm. We don't know why Granny planted them here, but we're grateful she did. The springhouse has never looked better!

[Engineered Spirits @EngineerdSpirit]

We've already taken one load of metal to the local metal salvage yard, but we'll send another load as soon as we've filled this trailer up. The wood and tin you see to the left are the salvaged materials from the workshop, which we plan to use in our distillery building.

[Engineered Spirits @EngineerdSpirit]

There's still quite a lot of metal left behind at the distillery building site that we have no use for, so we're gathering it up and loading it in the trailer to send to the metal yard, where it can at least be recycled.