Doghouse Distillery was born and bred in Battersea, London. Doghouse makes British spirits from scratch using locally sourced raw materials and utilizing British made packaging and closures.
The distillery was established in September 2016 and it took a further 12 months to build and commission the plant before our first release. We released our first spirit, Renegade Gin, in September 2017.
Our award-winning spirits are all handmade at the distillery, using locally sourced grain and it is home to a full brewery, fermentation area and bespoke stillhouse which boasts London’s only vodka fractionating column which stands 21 meters in height.
At the start of our process is grain. We receive this grain from one source who collects it from many farms based in Norfolk. It arrives to us having undergone the malting process only. From there mill the grain itself to a carefully selected grind in order to optimize the conversion of starch to sugar in the brewing process plus aid liquification of the end wort.
After milling we commence the mash in which we combine milled grain with hot water at varying temperatures depending on the type of spirit we are making. This brewing process takes us around half a day and once we have a high level of fermentable sugars we transfer this liquid (we call wort) to our fermentation area.
Fermentation is the process of yeast actively consuming sugar to produce alcohol and carbon dioxide. We do this over a period of 3-4 days and at high relative temperatures > 25 degrees. At the end of fermentation we have an alcoholic beer (we call it wash) ready for distillation.
Our distillation process for vodka involves a two step distillation whereby we undertake a pot distillation first (we call it a “beer stripping run”) followed by fractionation in our vodka column. The first pot distillation is aimed to remove as much water from the alcohol as possible. The end liquid is called a “low wine”. We then take this low wine into our fractionating column for a second distillation and this does the rest taking the ABV almost up to total purity at above 96% abv.
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When we are making whisky on the other hand, we do two pot distillations successively to create our spirit, before adding the end liquid to a barrel for maturation.
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We are happy to share our full processes with full transparency including our manufacturing processes and how we make our spirits. We are very proud of our team, what they do and our state of the art facility.
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We operate with care for our environment and sustainability rightfully sits at the heart of our decision making. This extends across all facets of our makeup from our grain to bottle approach through to our sourcing of raw materials and packaging coming from local suppliers who make and sell British products, and majority from within England where possible. Only a small number of select raw materials, such as botanicals for our Gin and Aperitivo, are sourced outside the UK and only when quality/availability dictates such a decision.
We are a small company and our team means everything to us. We therefore treat our people with the fairness they deserve and our company believes in inclusivity across the spectrum of human rights.