Purposeful intent from grain to glass.
Tree House Distillery.
Spirits and canned cocktails are available for purchase at all Massachusetts locations, with expanded availability coming soon!
Additionally, we offer an ever-changing selection of frozen cocktails at the Charlton Main Bar. These frozen delights highlight the delicious mixability of our distillery’s offerings, and are crafted for your enjoyment!
An introduction
Today, with a great deal of pride and excitement, we are introducing Tree House Distillery!
We built a distillery because we have something original and imaginative to add to the landscape of spirits in New England.
You may be thinking, ‘What does Tree House know about making spirits?’ Well, we understand sound mashing processes. We understand both clean and characterful fermentations that conjure unexplored esters from the ether. We understand the importance of good raw ingredients. We understand principled patience, and we understand the value of an uncompromising approach. Most importantly, we understand what tastes exceptional and what does not - we will not release a spirit that tastes less than extraordinary.
Over the years, we have built a highly capable ecosystem for creativity. The symbiosis between our beer, coffee, cider, wine, farm, and distillery programs makes us uniquely prepared to produce spirits that will surprise and delight you with both their inspired tastes and the artful ways in which we craft them.
Imagine an apple brandy distilled entirely from the manual pressings of native heirloom apples grown on our farm in Connecticut, and then barrel-aged for a year in third-use bourbon-barleywine barrels; seasonal vintages of fruit brandy (Eau de Vie) made from yellow raspberries, black currants, peaches, and pears gracefully exploring the terroir and evolution of our biodynamically farmed fields; a fortified stout made from three-year-old barrel-aged stout; a resourceful single malt made with smoked coffee chaff; a fortified cane beer - a pure sugarcane ferment halted by the addition of white rum and then left to age in barrels for an indeterminate amount of time; bourbon whose purpose is driven not by ruthless efficiency, but by the quality of its outcome; a rum made utilizing the Jamaican method of stillage solera, whereby leftover dunder from distillation is folded into the future fermentations to create a profoundly complex, estery rum delight; a vodka made with kudzu, transforming a nuisance vine into a beverage of distinction; and a solera barley port left to age and occasionally bottled from a foudre, topped up, and laid to rest for several years eventually becoming leathery and rich in a way that only time, patience, and imagination can conjure.
We have constructed the space and set aside resources to embark upon an irresponsibly ambitious bourbon program. The majority of our mash constituents - mainly corn, wheat, rye, and barley - are organically grown and malted in New England. In time, we will make barrel-aged beer in spent barrels from our bourbon program, enabling a level of individuality that would otherwise be impossible.
Our flagship rotational spirits - rum, vodka, liqueur, gin, seasonal Eau de Vie, and whiskey - all carry robust natural ingredient flavor profiles. You will taste the difference. As a mash-to-bottle distillery, we will neither be blending spirits concocted elsewhere nor sourcing neutral spirits for use in our program.
This is just the tip of the creative iceberg in store for the program - after all, we would not want to spoil all of the surprises.
. . .
Mr. John Charles Britton leads our program. John cut his teeth first by working as an apprentice at St. George Spirits in California and then as head distiller at Ann Arbor Distilling. He learned hospitality working alongside Ari Weinzweig at Zingerman’s Deli and is a classically trained guitarist renowned for his interpretations of Franz Schubert’s classical works.
John’s approach to distilling is as artful as you can imagine, given his background. Gravitating toward eclectic ingredients, ‘the hard way’ is John’s default. For example, while there are many ways to approach a coffee liqueur that result in a delicious spirit, we have found that a bit of extra effort makes a tangible difference in its inherent enjoyability. Typically, coffee liqueur is made by steeping a few sourced ingredients in a neutral spirit. Kola, our liqueur, is made with a custom-malted mash of roasted and chocolate malts, approximating chocolate-forward coffee flavor before distillation and remaining as a beautiful and powerful single malt spirit after it. The subsequent coffee infusion results from an exacting in-house roasting process to find the smooth, chocolate-forward flavor profile we were in search of for our liqueur. The outcome of these efforts is greater than the sum of its parts - the flavor profile is remarkable in its depth, character, and enjoyability.
John’s Cherry Eau De Vie took Double Gold at the prestigious San Francisco spirits competition, the rough equivalent of winning in the most competitive categories in the World Beer Cup.
. . .
Great beverages can transform ordinary moments into extraordinary ones. They can act as time machines with familiar flavors that bridge the present with the past and evoke feelings of nostalgia and a yearning for days gone by. Having fallen in love with this power, we are forever energized to explore the limits of creativity and to work tirelessly to get it right every single time.
Not only is this our life’s work, but it’s the work of our life. Your continued support genuinely means the world to us. It has enabled us to pursue new projects aggressively and without bounds.
A steady stream of new and inventive spirits will be available for your consideration regularly at Tree House in the days, weeks, years, and decades to come, complemented by an extensive cocktail and frozen drink program at the ready when our taprooms reopen.
We hope this note finds you in good health. Thank you for taking the time to learn about our spirits program.
Mash to bottle. Local, characterful ingredients. Excellent taste.
Local
Many of our base malts are sourced from Valley Malt in Hadley, Massachusetts. The yellow dent corn for our bourbon program is grown in northern Connecticut.
Field to glass.
Eau de Vie is an unforgiving spirit that tests a distiller’s acumen. John is particularly adept at drawing the essence from fruit in a finished brandy. The majority of the fruit in our Eau de Vie is grown at our farm in Connecticut.
In House
We take a great deal of pride in our creative ecosystem at Tree House. Our in-house coffee program provides the ideal cold brew for John to help craft the perfect Coffee Liqueur. This in-house control carries real value, and far exceeds that of a contract-based approach.
“Great beverages can transform ordinary moments into extraordinary ones. They can act as time machines with familiar flavors evoking nostalgic feelings and a yearning for days gone by. Having fallen in love with this power, we are forever energized to explore the bounds of creativity within this realm and to work tirelessly to get it right every single time.”
