The idea of opening up a distillery is something that AJ Temple has been conceiving since he was a young child. On vacation in England during a family trip back when Temple was 12, he visited the storied Plymouth Gin distillery and fell in love with all the aroma and the entire distilling process.
Back in October, the childhood dream became a reality when both AJ and his wife Jamie found a location to set up shop in Lynnwood, Washington. They opened on Halloween last year and have been distilling since as Temple Distilling, the first and only distiller who is located in the city.
The current distillates includes a limonello, a London Dry gin and a Navy Strength gin. Temple also says he has some batches of Navy Strength in suburban barrels from 2 Bar Spirits in Seattle, which he plans to release as a barrel-aged gin at some point.
According to Temple, one thing especially that makes the London Dry standout is that it’s a true to form classic London Dry. Using dry lemon peel, three different types of orange peel, bitter, sweet and fresh orange, Cuba berry, grains of paradise, angelica and orris root.
“We didn’t want to have something so crazy that it tastes amazing in this one certain cocktail, but you buy a bottle, bring it home and find, ‘oh, this doesn’t taste good in my gin and tonic or Martini.’” Temple says. “We just wanted something real versatile.”
Out of the current menu, just as or more popular than the London Dry is the Navy Strength gin.
The Navy Strength was where Temple wanted to branch out and do something bolder. Using different botanicals such as fresh lime peel, grapefruit peel and cassia bark, while removing the grains of paradise and Cuba berry, changes the composition. This gin comes in at 114 proof.
“It was really my fun go-big-or-go-home, have-fun sort-of-gin,” Temple says. “I like the Navy because there’s not a lot of other Navy Strengths out there. It’s been somewhat of a classic British thing to do for a while, but there’s maybe about two or three other local guys who do it.”
The ingredients and botanicals used come from California, because Washington isn’t a producer of ingredients such as organic lemons and natural pure cane sugar.
Temple wants to move into producing whiskey as soon as possible, but when budget and space allows. He says he wants to have at least a 20 gallon still by the end of the year to start experimenting with, or ideally getting a production size still they can begin working with.
At first, Temple started with a small one-liter glass still which is where they experimented with botanicals, either soaking overnight or exposing the botanicals to heat to see what each did under each condition. After a lot of blending and taste testing, they moved to a two-gallon copper still where they made small one-and-a-half gallon batches, roughly about 10 times. Once the big still started running, they made six half-batches and then scaled up to full.
“It’s tough to scale with gin because it’s not just multiplying the volumes of botanicals, versus alcohol,” Temple says. “You have to factor how long it’s on the heat and how that affects the overall flavor, and it makes a big difference. You can’t just double a half batch, it’s trickier. It’s trial and error.”
Reflecting on their start, not too long ago, Temple admits it was fun to play with the recipes in the beginning, hosting tasting parties to figure out what people liked and didn’t like. “Now we have our recipe down and it’s keeping things even and consistent, and I’m wanting to start getting into more flavors and more products,” he says.
Currently available only in Washington State, Temple is hopeful that they’ll be available in multiple states along the West Coast within the next five years, then hopefully looking into countrywide distribution to put this suburban distillery on the national scale.
