The award-winning local distiller started more than two years ago in a nearly 100-year-old abandoned horse barn in Northside. The new space downtown replaced a former nail salon.
“Me and the two distillers in the back did all the renovations here,” says master distiller Chris Courts. “We wanted the bar to look like the barn. It’s kind of the homage for it; it’s the lean-to, the wood and all the horse stuff. It makes it feel like the barn we came from.”
Co-founders Chris Leonidas and Josh Koch started their alcohol enterprise by home-brewing beer in their basements and graduated into distilling spirits from there, experimenting with a small 13-gallon still before expanding into a Northside barn with larger stills, exact recipes and a dedicated distiller in Courts, who joined the team in 2015.
That same homegrown ethic can be seen in the spirits they make today: corn whiskey, bourbon, vodka and moonshine.
Northside Distilling works to infuse both innovation and tradition into its products. As far as liquor goes, corn whiskey was the company’s first product and the one they’ve spent the most time perfecting. Made with corn and malted barley mash and distilled twice, this clear whiskey is bottled at 80 proof. It’s created and barreled at the distillery, where it can also be set aside to age as bourbon. (The company’s first batch of bourbon was released in the winter of 2016; the next is currently aging in charred oak barrels at the barn.)
And while corn whiskey was their first spirit, Northside Distilling Company is most well-known for its vodka, which won a bronze medal from the American Craft Spirit Association and earned a gold rating at SIPS, an international competition. While vodka is typically made with wheat or potatoes, Northside Distilling makes its with corn and distills it nine times to create a smooth flavor.
Rounding out the label, the company’s moonshine — called Northside Shine — is crafted like the original moonshiners: bottled at 80 proof, made with corn and sugarcane and distilled once — “just like your great grandpa would make it.”
Customers are welcome to experience the production process for themselves during tours of the bar downtown, which doubles as a manufacturing facility. A door in the back leads to the distillery area where there are stills, a hot-water heater, a large ice cream maker from an old creamery that doubles as a mash tub, rooms labeled “low-proof” and “high-proof” and a table that stretches along one of the walls. It’s here that Courts — along with two other distillers, Michael Marcagi and Brandon Cafferky — bottle each product by hand. Because they personally handle every product, Courts says they’re able to affect the quality for the better.
“We have this element of hustle and scrappy,” he says. “For the middle-range guys like us, we have to get creative in how we solve the problems of being in between. We’re not making 5,000 gallons of mash. We’re making 175 gallons.”
A recent change in Ohio law is what allowed the group to even consider opening a bar to serve cocktails made with their own products. The Ohio General Assembly passed House Bill 351 last April, allowing distillers to run bars and restaurants. Prior to this, Northside Distillery was only able to give out small samples at the barn.
“Really, the move downtown was two-fold,” Courts says. “One, to expand operation so we can make more product. And two, to be able to have a functioning bar.”
Now the Northside barn space will be used primarily for experimentation, storing and aging bourbon, while the expanded downtown location will carry the burden of production with more space for still tanks and the bonus of the bar for guests.
The most popular cocktail at the bar, a take on an Old Fashioned, is made from the brand’s own liquor, Courts says. “Instead of bourbon or rye, it’s made from our corn whiskey,” he says. “It’s got a bit of a uniqueness to it. Outside of that, our mule has been really popular. I’ve had all our cocktails and I haven’t had a bad one yet.”
Courts doesn’t see Northside Distilling becoming an industry giant like Jim Beam or Maker’s Mark, but he says there’s a lot of opportunity in the local scene. One-hundred years after Prohibition, it’s a chance to jumpstart this deeply seated history.
“A lot of people here love the local,” Courts says. “Midwest people are very humble, but we’re also proud of our stuff. Not prideful, but proud of it. We’re in a good place.”
NORTHSIDE DISTILLING COMPANY is located at 922 Race St., Downtown. More info: northsidedistilling.com.
