When Tom told me the new stills weren’t much larger than what we presently had, I believed him…..

Well, when they showed up I was pretty surprised!  The smaller of the two stills was a little larger than our cute Hoga still.  The larger of the two stills was enormous! 

And all the pieces/parts that came with them were like puzzle pieces.

Tom had already brought back some of the pieces on various trips to Kentucky including the head and tail boxes,

pipes and a few spirit tanks as well as some of the signs that were posted with the equipment while they were in production at Michter’s and on display at David Beam’s place.

It took two semi-loads to deliver all the equipment. Thankfully they arrived weeks apart from each other. 

Each time a load arrived, many a car passing by had to slow down and ask what in the world was going on!  One load dropped off the stills and their major parts while the second load dropped the three Cypress Fermenters, the mash tub, the cistern and more puzzle pieces. 

I didn’t know Macgyver had skills with a tow-motor, but, thankfully he does. 

So we were able to unload all the pieces and move them close to the distillery.  Then Tom was able to get an even better picture of what we were trying to accomplish with the equipment and the space.

All in all, it was a lot of “stuff” now piled in the driveway!

Exposure to the elements was likely not a great thing, so we needed to get going on getting this “stuff” moved inside and put in to place.

Tom had already been working out in his mind how all of this “stuff” was going to fit in the distillery as we were presently using it.  Turns out we needed to make some modifications in order to get everything in, which we had fortunately started before the arrival of the stills.  This included cutting a hole to the second floor of the distillery to accommodate the columns.  We also needed to enclose an area to the side of the distillery which is now the mash room.  The barrel room in the back needed to become a dedicated fermentation room. 

So, what happened to the barrels of Applejack aging away back there?  We had a new Rack House built on another part of our property for aging barrels! 

Wow.  I had no idea what we were really getting in to!

Moving day for the Applejack!