Continuum Distilling Opens In Waterbury With Craft Spirits Made From Beer

Because they apparently didn't have enough on their plates with Black Hog brewing, Ordinary cocktail bar, OLMO, Caseus, and The Stack in New Haven, Jason and Tom Sobocinski and Tyler Jones have launched Continuum Distilling in Waterbury. The distillery logo features a hop surrounded by the tricorner symbol for recycling, an emblem of their process, which takes the often discarded "trimmings" from area breweries, and reduces them to an unusual, boozy essence.

Head distiller Brandon Collins is a chemist by trade who got into distilling the same way most garage-space home brewers do: he just thought it was cool. He takes everything from finished beer, to flavorful leftover solids, and any bottom-of-the-fermenter sludge which isn't destined to become someone's flagship NEIPA, trucks it back to Continuum HQ, and there performs Appalachian magic.

I made it up to Continuum last weekend for their grand opening, and my first impression was that it shares a building with Brass Works Brewing. Neat! I'd had several Brass Works beers before, but I'd never been, so a single trip can be a BOGO for the efficiency-minded drinker on the go.

Thirty or forty people made the opening day celebration while I was there, and Brandon outlined the concept to all of us before inviting us in back of the little tasting room into the distillery space itself. Wasting no time, I was poured a neat, room temperature taster of ContinuRum. Made from 100% Blackstrap molasses instead of beer trimmings like the other spirits, this was an early, un-aged batch, and drank like hot, piratical moonshine. This version was really only good as a mixer, or possibly as a fortifier if you're planning to attack a goldship of the Spanish Armada. Later versions will be aged for a year in barrels which have last seen use aging beer, so there should be some interesting flavors imparted, along with a bit of mellowing.

Huge plastic totes which previously held juice, olive oil, syrups, and the like in previous lives, are filled with blends of fermented out beer, have some sugar and yeast added, and undergo a secondary fermentation into a sort of proto-beer before undergoing primary distillation in Continuum's first still. This runs off as a roughly 100proof rough cut, and is fed into a secondary distillation it exits as a 160 or so proof nearly finished product. The primary ingredients determine both the flavors of the spirits, and how Continuum treats them.

Charred is Continuum's house "whiskey." It's made from a blend of dark ales and cane sugar including, in the case of the batch I tried, Black Hog's Granola Brown Ale and Coffee Milk Stout. The distillery takes oak staves sourced from storm damaged trees, toasts and chars them, and ages Charred on the wood inside stainless steel kegs. The beer is readily apparent in the flavor of the spirit, and lends a pleasant, malty caramel to the slight vanilla-laced tannins of the oak. It's not exactly George T. Stagg, but the whiskey could make a nice little sipper if you're looking for something local and different, and it made for a very enjoyable Manhattan in the post opening party.

Distilling spirits from beer isn't new under the sun - Rogue brewery has an entire spirits division, and I've enjoyed several bottles of Pine Barrens Single Malt, which Long Island Spirits makes from distilled barleywine - but as far as I know, Continuum is the first spot dedicated to the method in Connecticut. Using a finished product like a sale-ready beer is an expensive and time consuming proposition, but by using beer trimmings the way farmers collect and use a brewery's spent grains, Continuum recycles and gets the most of the local brewing industry's agricultural inputs. I like the idea.

My favorite product at Continuum was Drops, a spirit distilled from Connecticut-sourced IPAs. Drops is clear and un-aged, with a distinct hoppy aroma. Herbal, and a touch bitter, people seemed to agree it was gin-like, and would do well as a martini with something like a blue cheese stuffed olive. I agreed, but felt like the floral quality of this batch of Drops made it more akin to a Bols Genever. It was mild enough to drink neat, even at room temp and 92proof, but Drops shows a lot of possibilities as a mixer, maybe with seltzer and Galliano or Elderflower liqueur and bitters.

Later on, next door at the brewery, a friend looked at the afternoon sun shining full on the sheer rock and tree topped cliffs outside the window and said if he'd just woken up he might think he was in Colorado. I don't think anyone will ever confuse the Brass City with Leadville, but Continuum and its roommate are a literal far cry from the Union Station clock tower and Waterbury's urban carpet further down the valley. There's not much of a view inside the distillery's tasting room, but the Naugatuck River churns by across the street between tree covered ridges and the following bends of Thomaston Avenue. On an unreasonably warm winter day the lot out front was a bit of a pleasant spot to stare up at the jagged black shapes of northern Rt 8's eternally circling buzzards against a blue sky as we waited, same as them, for a truck to make our next meal.

Maybe nothing is truly new under the sun, but every day still holds the opportunity.

Continuum Distilling, 2066 Thomaston Ave., Waterbury; continuumdistilling.com; 203 725 3291