A Modern Family Distillery
Tighe Brothers Whiskey Set To Open This Year
By Dave Felice
GPHN At-Large Board Member
Park Hill brothers Dan and Paul Tighe are turning an experimental hobby into a business and opening a distillery and tasting room in the Swansea neighborhood north of Park Hill.
“This has been a long journey, but well worth it,” says Dan Tighe. “We started about three years ago with a small still and a passion that developed into a business model. At this time, we’re still fortunate that neither of us has to do this to make a full-time living.”
The brothers appear to be well-suited for the project. Dan Tighe’s education is in chemistry and biology, with experience in sales. Paul Tighe’s background is in real estate and property management. Both are native Denverites.
Dan Tighe explains that the most time consuming part of the project was getting all the necessary safety approvals. His brother owns the warehouse on the land at East 42nd Avenue and Milwaukee, and the site was already zoned for industrial-retail use.
“The process is long because anything over 17 percent alcohol is considered explosive, so there are many safety measures,” says Dan Tighe. “Everything needs to be specially engineered. We used local architects and contractors, making sure everything met building and safety codes.”
The Denver Whiskey Co., doing business as Tighe Brothers Whiskey, will distill wheat-based whiskey, gin, and vodka, a Bourbon whiskey based on corn, and a rye whiskey.
“This is a lot more complicated than we first thought, but we are very excited about the outcome,” says Dan Tighe. “We were looking for something different and found that this was actually enjoyable.”
The main still is designed by a company in Georgia and made from stainless steel in China. The distillery will have a 6,000 gallon mash vat (known as a “tun”) and a 3,000 gallon finishing tank.
Distillation essentially involves selective evaporation and condensation. Grain is first toasted in a process known as “malting.” The malt is mixed with water and cooked, driving the fermentation of the “mash.” Steam from the cooking is cooled in coiled tubes to make the liquid product. Denver Whiskey will purchase grain already malted, and use local products whenever possible.
The name whiskey is derived from the Gaelic uisce beatha, meaning “water of life.” Product made only in Scotland, usually from a single crop of barley, is spelled “whisky” (no e). According to folklore, whiskey was discovered when someone left a bag of grain near a campfire in the rain.
Bourbon is a distinctly American whiskey made from corn.
“We will start producing our whiskey and Bourbon right away,” says Dan Tighe. “We plan on putting some product in casks for a minimum of a year and we’ll let additional barrels age for longer moving forward.”
Cask aging means that Denver Whiskey have some time before bottling and selling whiskey and Bourbon products.
“However, we plan on producing our vodka and gin immediately,” he noted. “The white spirits have about a two-to-three week turn around, from grain to bottle. This will be readily on hand shortly after we start producing. We will have a rudimentary bottling system that requires a lot of hands on deck initially, as the more automated systems are extremely expensive.”
The Tighes do not have any investors. “We felt that it was important to limit the decision makers in the process and keep the decisions within the family,” says Dan Tighe.
The Tighe brothers expect to have the tasting room open by the end of the year.