The copper column still at Milk Street Distillery.

Branchville, New Jersey · Est. 2017

Grain
to glass.

Sussex County’s first legal distillery in more than seventy years. Everything on the shelf is mashed, fermented, distilled, and bottled in the old feed store at 1 Milk Street.

The make The shelf

Tasting room Fri–SunThe still runs all week

Murder Bourbon ·War Penny ·Dam Break Rye ·McNally’s Irish Style Whiskey ·The Devil’s Bark ·Vexed Gin ·Blind Bettie Gin ·Kanpeki Rice Vodka ·Black Vulture Vodka ·Soulless Ginger ·Wooden Leg Rum ·Murder Bourbon ·War Penny ·Dam Break Rye ·McNally’s Irish Style Whiskey ·The Devil’s Bark ·Vexed Gin ·Blind Bettie Gin ·Kanpeki Rice Vodka ·Black Vulture Vodka ·Soulless Ginger ·Wooden Leg Rum ·

01Made here.

Milk Street is a distillery that keeps a tasting room, not a bar that happens to sell bottles. Brothers Mike and Gordon Geerhart built the plant with their own hands inside a late-1800s feed store. The street took its name from the Borden creameries that once stood on it. The whiskey takes its name from the work.

The historic feed-store building that houses the distillery. — 1 Milk Street, Building 1. The feed store is still the plant.

From the sack to the seal

Five rooms. One address.

Opened January 2017 with Black Vulture vodka and Wooden Leg rum. The shelf is larger now — bourbon, smoked bourbon, rye, Irish-style whiskey, two gins, rice vodka, ginger vodka — and the rule has not changed. If it is in the bottle, it was made on this floor.

Walk the make

02The make

No neutral shipped in from somewhere else and dressed up as craft. The column is in the room.

Mash

Corn, rye, barley, rice, cane. The grain hits the tun in this building.

Ferment

The wash sits in the fermenters until the sugar is gone and the beer is ready for the still.

Distill

Copper columns. The cut is made by hand, on the proof the grain wants.

Age

New white oak, seasoned bourbon barrels, and the occasional local beer barrel.

The still house interior at Milk Street.

Bottle

Filled, sealed, and labeled here. Nothing on the shelf was finished somewhere else.

03The shelf

Eleven spirits. Awards where they were earned. The tasting room pours these and nothing else.

Murder Bourbon bottle lying in a wooden barrel of charred oak.

Whiskey · 100 proofMurder Bourbon

War Penny bottle on black, black wax sealed with a 1943 steel penny.

WhiskeyWar Penny

Dam Break Rye bottle and its illustrated label.

Whiskey · 90 proofDam Break Rye

McNally’s bottle standing in a green field.

Whiskey · 90 proofMcNally’s Irish Style Whiskey

The Devil’s Bark bottle against a deep red ground.

WhiskeyThe Devil’s Bark

All eleven

After the bottle

04The room is second.

Friday through Sunday the tasting room opens and the same spirits are poured by the glass. Tours leave every half hour. You do not book them. You walk in. Weekdays are for pickup, not for a bar shift — email first so someone is in the building.

Tasting-room list Tours