Dead Drop Brings Home Gold

Dead Drop Straight Bourbon Whiskey & Dead Drop American Pecan Bourbon Whiskey both won gold medals at the Annual Whiskey & Barrel Nite competition in… Read more

Thornton Distilling Co NYE Celebration (Lansing Journal)

CBS Visits Thornton Distilling Co.

https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/video/distillery-opens-in-thornton/

What’s That Building? Thornton Distilling Co. on WBEZ

What’s That Building? Thornton Distilling Co. on WBEZ

Now Accepting Reservations!

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Thornton Distilling’s New Cocktail Menu Has Arrived

Please stop by and see what we’ve been working so hard on. We can’t wait to share these drinks with you and tell their story.… Read more

Sunday Brunch is back.

Join us every Sunday from Noon-3pm!

Around Town with Ana Belaval & WGN Morning News Visit Thornton Distilling Co.

Dead Drop Bourbon

Limited Edition Dead Drop bourbon just dropped. We’d like to thank you for your patience and to introduce you to an inquisitive blend of two… Read more

Introducing the first-ever Illinois peated single malt whisky, made using entirely locally-sourced Illinois peat.

In a hyper-local, terroir-driven take on our signature single malt whisky, Head Distiller Ari Klafter and Co-Founder Andrew Howell visited a private family-owned bog along… Read more

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In a hyper-local, terroir-driven take on our signature single malt whisky, Head Distiller Ari Klafter and Co-Founder Andrew Howell visited a private family-owned bog along the banks of the Mississippi River in western Illinois, where they hand-cut blocks of peat. We then dried our peat at the distillery for five months before handing it off to our good friends at Sugar Creek Malt Co., a third-generation family farm. True to our mission of using local ingredients as much as possible, we partnered with Sugar Creek, a family-run craft malthouse that sources grain from other local family farms and does everything by hand, including hand-turning their floor-malted germinating barley. For the base grain, we use a Pilsner malt for its soft, round character. The malt is kiln-dried and then cold-smoked using our local peat to delicately pass on the floral, earthy flavors that make this ingredient so unique.

We then went to work making whisky using traditional single malt techniques we employ day-in and day-out — mashing by hand, fermenting off-grain, and double pot-distilling on our pair of copper stills. Studying whisky-making in Scotland, you could say Ari has a passion for peat and considers it among the truest expressions of terroir in whisky. Peat is partially decomposed plant matter found in bogs that often takes thousands of years to accumulate. Historically used as a fuel source, peat has been used in Scotch whisky production for hundreds of years to smoke malted barley and contribute to the signature smoky, phenolic flavors associated with many Scotches. Requiring very specific anaerobic conditions, peat bogs can be few and far between, and the flavors from peat can vary wildly, mimicking the environment in which it developed. We’re fans of Grain to Glass, but we love Bog to Bottle! This has been a project several years in the making — now we’ll just need a little more patience as our Illinois peated whisky matures in our rickhouse.