Sherry Caldwell of Little Rock can say she was there when the first bottle of barrel-aged rum was born at Rock Town Distillery. As evidence, she took home a souvenir inscribed with “batch 1, bottle 1.”
She’ll set it next to her bottle of Arkansas Young Bourbon - batch 3, bottle 101 - the spirit that originally piqued her interest in the brand.
“When I saw this bottle of rum I thought, ‘Oh, that will go with the one I already have. I’ll donate it to the Rock Town Distillery historical museum one day,’” she says, with a laugh.
Caldwell, 31, took a tour of the distillery, started by Phil Brandon in 2010, about 18 months ago and added her email address to a growing list of volunteers willing to lend a hand when the distillery transfers whiskey, vodka and other liquors from barrel to bottle. In those days, the “in” was easy, but now the list has grown to more than 1,500 names, says Rock Town distiller Andy Lewis, 31.
The 15 to 20 volunteers are chosen at random, although preferential treatment is sometimes given to regulars with experience. For their trouble, they’re given a pizza dinner and the option to buy a bottle at half price. Rock Town used to give each volunteer a bottle, but as the parties grew, the distillery switched to a reduced-price arrangement.
The bottling parties - typically held once or twice a week - feel casual and festive. At the bar, cocktails are poured beforehand in red plastic cups. Volunteers write their names on the cups with permanent markers. We move into the large, white-walled, concrete-floored bottling room. The radio is set to classic rock.
We efficiently move liquor through the assembly line - empty bottles are blown clean with compressed air, filled, corked, sealed, labeled, numbered and placed into boxes. Conversation is punctuated by the sharp taps of the guy smashing down the corks with a rubber mallet.
I ask around, “Who has the hardest job here?”
Everyone points to 32-year-old Nathan Delgado, a visitor from Minnesota. He’s pressing the corks into the bottles using brute hand strength. I give it a shot, and it’s much harder than it looks, so I move on.
A few spots down, the job at the labeling station calls for finesse. It’s often manned by Ricky Hernandez, 36, who’s a regular, volunteering at least twice a month.
“This is my third time just this week,” he says. In fact, he often bottles much more than he can drink.
“I give away a lot of bottles to people I know who haven’t tried it. I expose them to it because a lot of Rock Town’s stuff is word of mouth,” he says. “For Christmas, I gave my employees a bottle of the Apple Pie,” referring to the 40-proof Apple Pie Arkansas Lightning, a blend of the Lightning whiskey, apple juice, cinnamon and spices.
HERE FOR THE BEER
A few blocks away at Diamond Bear Brewing Co., the bottling process is automated using mesmerizing machinery, but the atmosphere is businesslike.
Safety goggles and earplugs are the rule. And boots - preferably waterproof - should be seriously considered. The feeling is much like stepping into an episode of the Discovery Channel’s How It’s Made, watching a worker load empty bottles onto a belt that propels them through filling, capping and labeling stages at dizzying speeds.
The night’s five volunteers staff the station at the end, checking for mistakes like missing caps and labels, then hoisting them off the belt and into cases, usually four at a time, as fast as they can.
“We are bottle-lifting machines,” says 58-year-old Beverly Kleckner of Little Rock, who regularly volunteers at Diamond Bear with her husband, Tom.
Volunteers don’t drink before or during this bottling event. They want your wits about you as the equipment is fast, loud and somewhat hazardous. The floor is wet with beer, water and foam, and the workspace is tight.
“I wouldn’t call it a party,” Tom, 57, says. “I would call it volunteer work. There’s four or five of us doing it and we have to bob and weave and get out of each other’s way, but as the night wears on you develop a process.”
But he does like being paid in beer - generally bottles that had to be re-capped or “short fills” with a too-low volume of beer - and spending a few hours of activity with his wife.
The bottling events at Diamond Bear, which typically happen on Fridays, can take anywhere from two to four hours.
“We’re running about 160 bottles a minute on average,” said Diamond Bear brewmaster Jesse Melton. “So if you put that into hours, it would be 400 cases an hour, but there’s also stops to reload the labeler and things like that, but if we could steadily run that whole time, that’s what we would get.”
Melton, whose family started the brewery in 2000, says his email list has roughly 200 names, and his volunteers generally enjoy a behind-the-scenes look at the beer-bottling process.
“It’s fun getting to see the machine run and be a part of the bottling,” he says. “When they’re in stores, they say, ‘I could have filled that case up of beer!’” VOLUNTEER STATES
Though day-to-day operations can be managed by a smaller staff, Rock Town and Diamond Bear lean on volunteers to advance their growing operations.
When Rock Town began bottling large batches of Apple Pie Arkansas Lightning, their case load doubled.
“Our average run had been 60 to 80 cases at a time, then it jumped to 150 cases, and it became clear we needed more hands on and [to] finish quicker, so we started asking for help,” Lewis says.
Today, they see bottling parties as an investment that runs both ways. Customers can feel a sense of contribution while the distillery spreads brand awareness.
“From our point of view, we love getting people who can bring in parents or friends from out of town because we like to spread the name of the distillery around,” Lewis says. “And I think people who come in and help with the bottling are much more apt to recommend us to friends or strangers. They feel like they’re part of the process instead of just a consumer.”
For Caldwell, she feels less like a volunteer and more like a friend to the distillery.
“They welcome a variety of friends and strangers to the distillery to work together, enjoy dinner, meet people and learn something new. It’s like the perfect Christmas story all year long,” she says.
And though she’ll probably never use her new bottling skills in her kitchen, the sense of creating something is there, and she looks for the brand when browsing liquor store aisles.
“So many things are automated nowadays it’s almost hard to believe something is still done by hand, and to actually go through that process and see that done, and know those bottles are filled, and put together and by hand is something that’s hard to come by these days,” she says.
“And how many people can say, ‘I put together 900 bottles of whiskey last night ?”HIT THE BOTTLE
At Diamond Bear Brewery, 323 S. Cross Street, Little Rock, bottling events take place on Friday or as needed. To add your name to the volunteer list, visit diamondbear.com/blog and submit your email address. For more information, call (501) 708-2739.
At Rock Town Distillery, 1216 E. Sixth St., Little Rock, bottling parties typically begin at 5:30 on weeknights and the staff generally allows volunteers to bring a guest. Sign up at http://arkansaslightning.com/bottling-parties/. For more information, call (501) 907-5244.
Style, Pages 25 on 02/11/2014