Hammer Spring Distillers Interview
hammerspring.com
Instagram: @hammerspringdistillers
Earlier this week I had the great opportunity to sit down over G&T’s with our new neighbor, JP Bernier, Owner and Head Distiller of Hammer Spring Distillers. If you’re looking for a genuine experience exploring craft spirits, you need to visit JP and his dog, Otto. JP’s knowledge and genuine enthusiasm for his craft is infectious so you’re sure to have a good experience. Located in Salt Lake City at 3697 West 1987 South, the distillery boasts an impressive portfolio including two vodkas, gin, rum, habanero vodka, coffee liqueur, barrel aged rum (seasonal), barrel aged gin, and (coming soon!) a bourbon.
Hammer Spring Distillers offers tours and tasting options, or you can simply stop in to pick up your favorite spirit.
Call (801) 599-4704 to book a tour, preferably at least one day in advance.
12:00pm - 6:00pm (Tuesday thru Friday)
12:00pm - 5:00pm (Saturday)
Photo by Slug Mag
Chad: So what is the Hammer Spring origin story?
JP: The moment was about 16 years ago. My wife bought me a wine kit for my birthday. One of those do-it-yourself home kits, it comes with a bucket and hydrometer and a bag of sour grapes. We put it together and made the worst batch of wine that there ever was, it was terrible! So we went back to the store where we got it and we're like…what went wrong? They started asking us things that we didn't know about, things that weren’t in the instructions like…
What kind of yeast did you use? What was your water PH and what temperature did you ferment? I didn't know the answer to any of their questions. So he recommended that we get another one and do a little bit more studying and take a little bit more of a scientific approach to it. So we did and we made a little bit of an improvement and over like the next decade or so, we produced several batches and got pretty good at it. So it was really just kind of this hobby. It was something that we did, you know, we’d make a red wine in the summer and a white in the late fall when it’s a little cooler.
Eventually, I was looking for a way to get out of what I was doing. I didn't want to sit at my desk for the rest of my life drawing house plans. So we started touring distilleries to see if there was something that we could do. We went to big distilleries where some made great products and others that were terrible. We went to small distilleries and had the same experiences — some made great products while others didn’t. Yeah, so that told us the size of the operation didn't really matter regarding the quality of the product.
We started putting away a little bit of money and buying equipment here and there. We'd buy things like a pump, a really nice pH meter or other measuring equipment. After a few years, our garage was full. My wife and I thought, if we're gonna do this, we gotta do it now because we're out of room and then we have to have a yard sale and get rid of all this stuff. So we jumped in headfirst, got an address, went through all the permitting and eventually opened our doors. So here we are, still learning every day.
I first started out not ever having worked in the industry. At first, not having experience was a challenge but I’ve found that there's been a little bit of a silver lining to it. I didn't learn anybody else's bad habits. I probably have plenty of my own bad habits, but I didn't come into this thinking that there was a certain way that you had to do it. It's kind of a silly parallel but the story of the movie Cool Runnings. The Jamaican bobsled team and they wanted to be so much like the champions, the German bobsled team. They couldn't win a race because they were trying to be the Germans until they finally were like, let's just be us and then they started winning races. So I think there's a little bit of wisdom to, you know, not being constrained to somebody else's ideas if you want to succeed.
Photo by Slug Mag
Chad: What is the hardest thing about doing business during COVID?
JP: So the way COVID has really impacted us the most is the shutdown of bars and restaurants. We were just getting into approaching local establishments and we felt like we had a little bit of traction when the rug just kind of got yanked out from under our feet. The uptick is that we have better walk-in traffic and sales here at the distillery because the bars and restaurants were closed.
Chad: What makes Hammer Spring special?
JP: Well, there's a couple things. The Hammer Spring Potato Vodka is a unique product to Utah. It's a one-of-a-kind, farm-to-glass spirit made with whole fresh Utah potatoes. We’re the first commercial distillery in Utah to make vodka from potatoes. Another thing that makes us unique is I'm kind of a one-man-band here. It keeps my overhead down, but it also means I can only produce so much. So because our equipment is small each distillation, that's a hundred gallons of mash with the fermentation. The ABV that we get out of our fermentation fills exactly one fifteen gallon barrel. So each of our barrels is a single batch, a single distillation per barrel, which means that each barrel will be slightly unique. Even though it's a consistent product, it might be a little bit different from month-to-month, or seasonally going through the year. Yeah. So that gives people something to look forward to. Oh, and currently we’re the only distillery in Salt Lake City proper and we definitely have the best dog, Otto!
Photo by Hammer Spring
Chad: Do you have a favorite drink?
JP: Recently, my go-to has been our gin. I usually have it neat with a little bit of ice. I really am a whiskey drinker but since our whiskey is not ready yet, I haven't been drinking much. The Hammer Spring whiskey release is coming up soon next month. So I think that's about to change!
Chad: What's your favorite outdoor activity or Utah location?
JP: Perhaps hiking, I guess that's what we do the most. I'm also into shooting sports.
I don't get an opportunity to do that very much. My hours don't usually coincide with my friends. I work on Saturdays and they are busy with other things on Sundays or some combination of that kind of thing. So if I go shooting usually it's just by myself and it's not as much fun as, you know, when you can go with your buddies. But yeah, I like to hike the Wasatch and snowshoe in the wintertime. I also skate, I used to play hockey so I go skating with my friend sometimes.
Photo by Hammer Spring
Chad: Wait, you played hockey!?!
(Chad & JP talk all things hockey for an inordinate amount of time)
Chad: What's next for you guys?
JP: That's the bourbon. We're going to open a barrel in a week or so to test it. Hopefully it's ready. They're small barrels — the aging process is faster in a small barrel because there’s an increased surface to liquid ratio than bigger barrels. It'll still be a young bourbon, we're not going for you know, 25-year Pappy Van Winkle here on our first release, obviously. But we have high hopes that it's going to be good. We followed our same guidelines as we did with our potato vodka and the gin. We didn't cut corners. So we're hoping that the trend of our good products so far is going to extend into our bourbon. We’ll just sell that from our location (for now) and probably open one barrel a month.
After that, probably around Christmas time, we’ll release our barrel finished rum. We put that in the barrel the first week of July and we like to give it about six to eight months in the barrel. Our batch from last year was great, it sold out quickly!
Photo by Hammer Spring
Chad: So what's a fun fact that the general public doesn't already know?
JP: I guess my friends know this but I’m a retired paramedic and I did Search and Rescue for Salt Lake County for a while. I guess I’m kind of a boring person. I don't have a lot of fun facts or secrets. Let me think here...
Okay, so my ancestors came from Italy and they were knife makers. My great-grandfather invented the little folding pocket knife that would go on the end of a gentleman's pocket watch chain. So it had a pocket watch on one end and a little folding pocket knife on the other end. He came to the United States with his sons Michael and Felix and they started the Imperial Knife Company. Imperial made bayonets for the Korean and Vietnam wars. So when you put the bayonet over the end of the barrel that has a click lock on it. They patented that thing. If you ever see an old antique bayonet that's stamped Imperial, that's my family.
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