Thank the Honeybees at Hatch Distillery

Craft distillers throughout the United States are distilling honey to create unique spirits with new aromatic and flavor notes. Hatch Distillery Co. in Egg Harbor, Wisconsin uses honey it produces in creative ways to bring a new image to spirits. 

Chris Roedl, co-owner at Hatch Distilling Co., started with a small number of beehives as a hobby and the love for agriculture, specifically chickens, which is where the name “Hatch” came from.

After leaving the agricultural side of his work, Roedl filled his free time with beekeeping; eventually turning into a self-described “beek” or a beekeeping geek.

“I had to do something with the animal husbandry piece of my brain, so I got into beekeeping and that hobby was super approachable. I started with a few books and a couple of items and that hobby just grew out of control,” said Roedl.

Roedl wanted to find a way to combine honey and his distillery into one.

“I knew I wanted to do my own thing, start my own distillery and two was I had this beekeeping hobby that was just going crazy and I needed something to do with the honey,” Roedl said. “It just so happened that honey really makes a cool distillate.”

The process is simple, yet painstaking. Hatch Distillery takes its honey and ferment, or age, it into wine or mead. This honey mead has about 10% alcohol where it will then be boiled off at around 170 degrees Fahrenheit. From there, Roedl says through some magic and equipment it then turns into their vodka, gin and more.

So, with his growing interest in distilling and beekeeping, it became a perfect fit. Now, he manages anywhere from 50-100 hives year-round, with some extra help from beekeepers as well in Stevens Point. 

Habitat loss is a huge challenge for honeybees, so involving beekeeping in its work creates a steady population. But it is also creating new areas for them to thrive. Even through the winter, the bees are still able to keep producing honey, just at a slower pace.

Roedl describes it as the worker bees giving signals to reduce their population in winter while also storing a bunch of honey away.

“They almost go dormant and their metabolism slows down with the temperature,” Roedl said. “They then ball around the Queen where they work as a superorganism, taking turns outside of that ball while the inside stays warm.”

Raising queen bees is also an important part of the process in order to carry on traits in their bees. Though the general rule is the more aggressive the bees, the better the honey production, Roedl states that he rather have his bees with gentle traits. 

“I’d rather be enjoying the work so these have to be gentle, but then also we only select breeding stock from hives who have survived the winter here in our county. Through that selection we’ve done a pretty good job of doing better here in northern county winters,” said Roedl.

Hatch opened in 2018 on the main drag of Egg Harbor and keeps his beekeeping within the local area as well. Door County, being a tight-knit community, was also a great advantage to keeping a low carbon footprint for the distillery. 

“Sourcing local reduces emissions from transportation,” said Laura Stevens, UW-Milwaukee’s Solid Waste and Recycling Coordinator. “This is important because carbon emissions are linked to climate change, which can have disastrous environmental, human health, and economic impacts if reduction targets aren’t met.”

Keeping a low carbon footprint was one of Roedl’s main goals that matched up with their mission statement: to celebrate people, place and time. They work with Hyline Orchard for odd varieties of apples that aren’t as popular for cider to make a 100% Egg Harbor product, along with working with a dairy farm up the road that grows their grains for whiskey. 

“The carbon footprint of what we do is just so small, and hyper-local. For example the dairy farm, they don’t really have much interaction with their customers, so to see a dairy farm now able to have supplemental income and to be able to take advantage of all the cool visitors we have to Door County, its great,” said Roedl. 

John Gardner, Program and Policy Analyst for UW-Milwaukee’s Office of Sustainability said, “Minimizing business-related carbon footprint is vital to limiting global emissions in the next 10 years and the associated impacts of climate change. A small carbon footprint shows customers that a company places high value on the ecosystem services it currently relies on and keeps money in the local community, strengthening local supply chains.”

Interestingly enough, they have also turned the nightmares most have about gin into a desired drink; making it their most popular spirit. Unlike traditional gin being harsh and bitter, theirs took on notes of floral and citrus by using local resources like common juniper berry, white spruce needles, and, of course, their own honey.

This past year, their gin even won best of show in the National Honey Board’s Spirits competition.

“What’s been really cool is all these craft distilleries across America really challenging the definition of gin. Juniper berry is the flavor that you think of when you think of gin, but after that, there’s not too much regulation,” said Roedl. “So that’s what we’ve done, and a lot of other distilleries have done is they’ve really challenged that definition.”

Foraging is just another way that Hatch is hyper local with most of their products. For Roedl and others at Hatch it’s a great excuse to get outside for a hike.

“Common juniper happens to be native to Wisconsin so in the fall when all those berries are ripe we go over and harvest those ourselves,” said Roedl.

Caleb Despins, head distiller and forager at Hatch, says it’s all about timing. “If you harvest at just the right time, they’re perfect, like really well dried. We will get anywhere from three to five gallons and they look like a berry, but if you break them open they’re not.”

The same thing goes for white spruce tips too, according to Despins he has to wait for the perfect time so the needles have the lemongrass flavor to them. If you wait too long, the needles are too mature and have a completely different tone. 

“Overall, it really is a way to connect to local agriculture, and just like what craft beer was 10 years ago, 20 years ago, distilling is going into that route and there’s always going to be a new local option popping up across the landscape in every town, it’s really exciting,” said Roedl.