Fredericton Distillery makes Gin, Rum, Vodka And Whiskey On-Site
FREDERICTON — When a group of Fredericton friends wanted to share the East Coast mentality, opening a distillery sounded like a good idea.
Black Galley Distilling is owned by Lloyd Chambers, Nicole McCarty, Duncan McSporran, and Naomi McSporran.
“We really wanted to create products that we would share with our friends and they would share with their friends,” said Chambers. “That East Coast mentality of sitting around and enjoying some drinks.”
After distilling for a couple of years, the last year has been a process of getting more licences, developing recipes and testing batches. At the beginning of 2021, they sold through breweries like Picaroons, Maybee’s, and Flying Boats Brewing. This April they started selling at their retail location on Hanwell.
“Most of our friends have been in,” said Chambers. “So we are reaching out into different areas of the community and we are getting a lot more traffic now, people that we don’t know which is a good sign.”
The distillery sells gin, vodka, and rum. Everything is made, bottled, fermented, and distilled on Hanwell. A new batch of rum, one of their most popular items, will be available this November.
“We are sticking with a British-style molasses-based rum,” said Chambers. “A lot of flavour, caramelly flavour, coming out of the rum.”
Operation-wise, they work with a 100-litre still and a 250-litre still, which Chambers said is considered small even for smaller distilleries.
“What that does is it creates some really good unique tasting products but it’s very labour intensive,” said Chambers.
Just before Canada Day, they distilled their first whiskey. Customers will have to wait three years for the single malt whiskey to be ready in 2024. Luckily the wait is over for their series of local blueberry spirits made with Blueberry New Brunswick.
“We fermented the blueberries into a wine and distilled it,” said Chambers. “Then, for some of the products we’ve added the blueberry back into it, so it’s creating a unique product.”
The bottles first released on New Brunswick Day weekend and will be restocked on September 18 at their location on Hanwell. Located right off the highway, they are excited to welcome new customers to Fredericton when tourism kicks up next summer.
“If people come in and they want to know how we make stuff we definitely take them out back and show them this is how they make the product,” said Chambers.
In the future, they are thinking about exporting their alcohol to the UK. New Brunswick will always come first, as their current step is to get their products available throughout the province.
“We are always going to be really small but we can definitely produce stuff and sell to different places around the world,” said Chambers.
To read more stories like this in Huddle, sign up to receive our free daily newsletter.
Rachel Smith is a summer intern for Huddle. Send her story suggestions: [email protected].