In my research into local businesses that looked interesting I found Loon Liquors. They are a distillery south of the Twin Cities that distill their own organic whiskey, gin, and vodka.
Now, I don’t drink but there was something about them that seemed interesting. And my girlfriend Chris does drink. And they have a “cocktail room” that is open Thursday through Sunday. So we drove to check it out.
They are located in an industrial building in Northfield, MN, about 40 minutes South of where Chris lives. You go in the door, down a corridor, down another, and halfway down another corridor. Then a door to the side opens into their large high ceilinged space with the distilling equipment taking up about 1/3 of the space and the rest with tables and their bar.
We were there around 11:30am so it was just the bartenders relaxing.
They pride themselves on organic ingredients and going straight from whole grains to their products. Plus for their cocktail room they make from scratch everything they put into their mixes from the bitters to the tonic water to the candied ginger. They also make several soft drinks.
We stayed for a couple of hours talking to the bartenders and tasting different things. Their ginger ale was amazing with quite a strong ginger flavor. Their root beer is truly the best I have ever had. There are some good small batch root beers available in MN but this was by far the best.
Chris liked one of their cocktails more than the other and we tasted a few of their liqueurs. Their coffee is amazing and dangerous. We got a bottle of their ginger (Chris likes ginger A Lot; I plan to make a ginger creme custard. Like creme brûlée but without the sugar top).
Overall their flavor combinations were amazing. They are distributed through 300 different locations in Minnesota (so they are definitely a real business) and it’s a small organization. A couple of friends from high school started it and I don’t think they have more than 4-5 employees.
We are going to relocate game night here this coming Friday and now I have a really good reason to reach out to their business development guy.