When Iron Fish Distillery in Thompsonville launched its spirits business in 2016, it sought to work with as many Michigan-based businesses as possible, even reaching back to the 19th century.
As Michigan’s first farm distillery growing grains and distilling spirits, today Iron Fish Distillery produces Hazlet rye across 80 acres of land it owns along the Betsie River watershed, located a few miles east of Crystal Mountain Resort.
The farm, which was previously fallow, spans 120 acres. Outside the production facilities, some of the land is used for a garden, where botanicals and flowers are grown and harvested for use in cocktails and small plates.
“We used to grow winter wheat, but we came to like the flavor profile of the Hazlet rye, and we source all of the other grains from nearby farms,” says Troy Anderson, marketing manager of Iron Fish Distillery. “We even come full circle. Our spent mash for the distilling process is sold to a local farmer who raises cows and buffaloes, and we use the beef and buffalo meat for our pizzas.”
The grain-to-glass enterprise was founded by Richard Anderson (Troy’s father) and David Wallace (Troy’s uncle) following a trip the pair made to a generations-old farm distillery on the island of Islay in northern Scotland.
Today, Iron Fish Distillery produces a variety of gins, whiskeys, bourbons, vodkas, rums, and ready-to-pour cocktails. Among the more popular products are bourbon aged in maple syrup barrels. The syrup is sourced from the Griner Family Sugar Bush in Copemish, located a few miles south of the distillery.
Founded in the 1890s, the fifth-generation maple syrup farm sources its sap from 4,000 maple trees. The sap runs from roughly mid-February to early April. The ideal harvest occurs when sunny (thawing) days are followed by freezing nights.
“Mother Nature tells us when the trees are ready to produce sap,” says Scott Griner, who owns the business with his wife, Jennifer. “I visited Iron Fish before they opened, and today, 95 percent of our product goes to make their whiskey and spirits. They’ve been a very steady customer of ours.”
Iron Fish Distillery’s custom oak barrels are produced by Joe Smith, owner of Croze NestOak Barrels in Grand Rapids. Smith handcrafts around 15 barrels per month for Iron Fish Distillery’s Mad Angler Bourbon and Mad Angler Rye.
The Mad Angler spirits are named after a character woven into the poems and prose of Michael Delp, former director of creative writing at the Interlochen Center for the Arts in Interlochen, southwest of Traverse City.
Another local connection involves Short’s Brewing Co. in Bellaire, which helped create Soft Parade Vodka — believed to be the first such spirit infused with real fruit, including locally-grown strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, and raspberries.
Next up, Iron Fish will “host a holiday release event for a new spirit offering that will be an annual product,” Troy Anderson says. “Part of the release event will support nonprofits that promote fresh water and watershed preservation.”
