Pro: Micro-Miracles
by Matthew Lyons

I'm from Colorado, and one thing that Colorado definitely takes pride in is its drinks industry. Aside from being home to a multitude of good craft beer breweries, it's also home to a flourishing wine industry. But the state's crown jewel can really be said to be Stranahan's Colorado Whiskey. It was the first (and definitely the best) microdistillery I'd ever been to. It makes some of the best American whiskey I've ever had, and has certainly set my personal standard for every other microdistillery out there.

Microdistilleries, in short, are simply good business. Sure, they're small scale, they're microscopic scale - that's part of their appeal, isn't it? It's certainly in the title. Having a whiskey (or any other spirit of your choice) that you can trace back to the very still it came from isn't just impressive, it's something of a luxury. After all, you'd be hard-pressed to find the exact still your Jack Daniels' came from. Being locally-sourced can potentially yield a number of positive results, both for the distillery and for its patrons: For the distilleries, it means having the ability to be pickier and more discerning with their ingredients. For the patrons, it often translates into a measure of hometown pride, with New Yorkers drinking spirits that were distilled in New York, and Coloradans drinking their Colorado Whiskey.

Locavore culture has only recently started to genuinely take off in my home town of Denver, and the Stranahan's Colorado Microdistillery has definitely had a big hand in that. Anywhere you go in Denver - anywhere in all of Colorado, really - any good bar worth its salt is going to have a bottle of Stranahan's behind the bar. Some bars even keep personal bottles of the stuff on hand for the regulars who have purchased their own bottle for when they come back. And they do keep coming back. That's how good their whiskey is. It's a quality spirit, which they definitely credit to their small-scale operation.

It's also fair to say that that selfsame quality isn't necessarily a trait uniquely specific to Stranahan's - there are numerous microdistilleries out there that are using small-scale techniques to achieve a certain quality that's come to be expected of the microdistillery culture. After all, being so-small-as-to-be-microscopic isn't enough - the quality has to be there, too. But that's what's so cool about the microdistilleries around today: being so small, they can focus on not only making consistently quality spirits, they can actively seek to improve on their formulas.

After all, most microdistilleries are just getting past the stage of being start-ups, and being new means breaking into a thriving industry already densely populated by giants, worse, faceless giants who rely on their labels, rather than their quality, to sell bottles. Nobody's saying that Jack, or Jim, or Jose are bad spirits, it's just that they're lacking something new and unique.

That's where microdistilleries come in and really shine - to them, unique is the name of the game. After all, if you want to be recognized, you had damn well better be recognizable. Keeping this sentiment in mind, many microdistilleries are getting somewhat ingenuitive in their methods of distillation.

Many microdistellieries use a "German Style" combination still - a cross between a pot and a column still - in order to distill their spirits. However, for some, this simply isn't good or creative enough to separate themselves from the now-growing pack. Kings County Distillery in Brooklyn, New York, uses magnetic induction to heat its stills, and California's Treasure Island Distillery purportedly uses what's called a counterflow molecular sieve instead of the regular charcoal filter.

Ingenuity isn't all that microdistilleries are good at - given their small scale, their advertising tends to fall a little bit by the wayside, since most of their revenue's going into further production. That said, it's understandable that their product tends to be a little pricier than the average going rate for a bottle. These microdistillers aren't corporations, they're small business owners trying to make a quality product, cover all of their expenses and still eke out a little bit of profit at the same time. That's tough to do at the best of times. So a few dollars tacked on to the price tag when you go to buy yourself a bottle is understandable.

Judging from the recent explosion of microdistilleries, it's clear that we're likely to be seeing a lot more of them cropping up in all sorts of places - currently there are an estimated one hundred and eighty-plus microdistilleries operating in the United States. If half of them are able to make quality spirits, we, the drinking public, still come out ahead, and with a universe of alcoholic variety to take our pick from.

That, when it's all said and done, is the most important part.

Con: Boozy Blunders
by Ethan Church

Half, I'm sorry to say, just isn't good enough.

Do you want to know why the big distilleries are still around? They make good liquor. It's that easy. Being big enough to throw around a big chunk of change on advertising generally means that they're probably doing something right.

Microbrewery culture came about because back when those microbreweries were first being thought up, there was a decided lack of quality in the beer industry - it was only the big-name brewers putting out thirty-racks of Bud and Coors and Pabst and Keystone Light, and while those beers are fine as they are, there wasn't a lot of variety in the industry, nor was much attention being paid to maintaining superior quality.

Fast forward some handful of years later, and Budweiser is spinning its wheels coming up with faux-craft wheat and "American Ale" brews just to keep up with the craft brewers. And do you know what? Good for the craft brewers, making the big boys shake in their boots.

I only bring this up because I honestly don't see that kind of pronounced lack in quality in the spirits industry today - at least, on the big distilleries' side of things. See, that's really what impelled the microbreweries to come in and take over the scene. The inherent problem with that analogy is that there's nothing wrong with the spirits industry today that should necessitate the recent explosion of microdistilleries.

The industry already has big distilleries and small distilleries alike, and the fact is that they all put out excellent spirits. We're not living in a drinking culture in which the only quality whiskey or vodka you can get is from some boutique microdistillery - they still sell Knob Creek and Grey Goose, as far as I know. That's the biggest illusion of microdistillery culture - alleging themselves to be the very last bastion of quality liquor in a sea of crap booze. For anyone willing to take a closer look, it's clear to see that that illusion simply doesn't hold up.

What makes the price of a bottle worth it? The quality, not the size of the distillery. I'll happily pay a higher price for a bottle of Grey Goose, because it's premium vodka. Paying a small-scale distillery to be a small-scale distillery for the sake of being a small-scale distillery is a backwards concept. Paying a higher price for a higher quality drink? That's the ticket. I'm not saying that every last microdistillery's product is undrinkable dreck - far from it. Stranahan's is one of the best American whiskeys I've had, too. But the tragedy is that Stranahan's is the exception, not the rule.

A 375mL bottle of un-aged corn whiskey from the King's County Distillery in Brooklyn, New York retails for just under forty dollars, which is, in no uncertain terms, completely ludicrous. Forty bucks can get you a bigger bottle of better whiskey for that - but at that price, the size of the bottle does matter. A 375mL bottle has no business wearing a forty-dollar price tag, especially not in the case of a 375mL bottle of un-aged moonshine. When was the last time you paid that much for a flask-sized bottle?

The price itself is prohibitive - which may or may not be the point. Locavore culture is a prideful endeavor, touted as the antithesis of exclusivity, which itself is a form of - you guessed it - exclusivity. By rejecting the "snobbish" corporate beverage culture, small businesses are free to produce, market, and not least of all charge whatever they want, all while maintaining the image of struggling independence. It's just a shame that the only people who can afford their bottles are the very snobs their image seems engineered to reject.

It's as if these microdistilleries have gotten so wrapped up in their boutique-y image that they've forgotten that they're still providing a service. There's nothing wrong with charging more for your product, but only if it's worth the upcharge. If it's not, you're acting deluded and insulting your customer base. Like I said, half just doesn't cut it. If half of the microdistilleries in the country are putting out quality spirits, the corollary to that is half of them aren't and are still slapping exorbitant price tags on merchandise of inferior quality.

As far as progress and ingenuity in the distillation process go, I'm all for crafting a better, cleaner spirit, but I take issue with the use of the German-style combination still. When was the last time that Germany produced a world-class award winning spirit? Safe to say, I think it's been a while. I'm sure that the combination still works just fine as it is, but there's a reason that the column still and the pot still are still being used individually: they work just fine.

Progress is fine and dandy if it's making clear and large improvements to its predecessors, but I'm just not convinced that the combination still does that, or anything like it. It's hard to improve on something that, when it's utilized by expert distillers, has been consistently producing top-quality spirits for hundreds of years now. Progress for progress's sake in that case is just... arrogance.

Unfortunately, arrogance, it seems, looks like it may be the name of the game for the microdistillery scene. If only these microdistilleries would focus less on their price tags and boutique image and more on crafting the highest-possible quality spirit they could.

That, when it's all said and done, is the most important part.