Hidden Gems: Meet Austin Adamson of Ballmer Peak Distillery

Today we’d like to introduce you to Austin Adamson. Them and their team share their story with us below:

Co-founders Austin & Eric have been best friends since middle school. After finishing college Eric went searching for a new city that had more diverse weather than his hometown of Phoenix. Austin would accompany him on these trips and they would drink and eat their way around a city for a week or so, to determine if it would be the right spot to call home, and it was obvious that Denver was the right choice. Austin on the other hand moved to LA to use as home base for international traveling, only working his IT jobs to build up enough funds to go on another multi-week expedition. When he wasn’t traveling Austin was obsessed in buying, tasting, and experimenting with all sorts of alcohol. It started small and amateurish with the college staple of ‘skittles vodka’ but Austin soon took the basic concepts of infusing and macerating flavors into spirits into a full-on hobby, bringing new experiments to every social opportunity and gifting the hits to friends and family for every occasion. One spring when Austin was visiting Eric in Denver for a friend’s wedding, they did a beer crawl through Golden, CO and found themselves ending the night a Golden Moon Distillery’s speakeasy tasting room. That’s when the idea first hit. “We like craft beer, but that market is already supersaturated… We like whiskey, and there don’t seem to as many options for distilleries.” While it started out as more of a light-hearted jest between friends, “…Yeah, we will open a distillery one day…” Eric was becoming more and more fed up with his day job of web development and programming. Over the course of 6 years, the two slowly put together their business plan, eventually expanded their building search to western-Denver suburb, Lakewood and things started moving quickly. Austin moved to Denver in 2018 immediately after the building for Ballmer Peak Distillery was found. They signed the lease and started the build-out. During that time Austin took a job at Denver Distillery as their assistant. 8-months into his role as ‘assistant distiller’ Austin took over as head-distiller when the founding distiller left. He was then featured on a special episode of Discovery Channel’s Moonshiners, (S8E24, Master Distiller) and begun training his replacement. After a total of 18 months at Denver Distillery Austin left and begun working full time at Ballmer Peak Distillery where they opened their tasting room, cocktail lounge doors on November 19, 2019. Eric and Austin planned to take things slow, not pay themselves, and ramp into things during their first few months of being open. Things were looking better and better with each week and with a bit of momentum they were ready to really to make bigger pushes into self-distributed wholesale and start advertising and marketing when March of 2020 hit. With the local restrictions put into place, specifically closing their tasting room where 90% of all the revenue was coming from. Luckily overheads were low, with no employees, they just had worry about paying rent and utilities. Austin saw the writing on the walls and quickly transition the distillation production into hand sanitizer. They focused on calming panic buying and supporting the community by giving away free hand sanitizer to anyone who requested it. They were able to survive by the attention they gained from their kind acts, and still able to sell retail bottles of spirits the community returned the favor by buying out all available inventory as quickly as Austin could produce it. Austin also used this time to focus on sustainability and community efforts, which the city of Lakewood recognized them for, with two sustainability awards and the Mayors Inspiration award. The challenges didn’t stop there, with outdoor seating being the only option for a very cold winter season, employee hiring hurdles and challenges when things became too busy for the two to handle everything on their own, and most recently the increased lead times and increased cost of materials and shipping with current chaos of the supply chain. Currently, Austin and Eric have two bartenders, a dedicated salesperson, and are extremely optimistic. that 2022 will bring Ballmer Peak Distillery growth and success on a whole new levels across wholesale, their tasting room, and community involvement. 

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Major Challenges: Launching the business during a pandemic. Pivoting to hand sanitizer. Unable to start into wholesale for over a year because restaurants, bars, and liquor stores were unable or unwilling to take on new products. 

Tasting room compliance, navigating the changes by city, state, county, and country on a weekly basis. 

Unable to qualify for most government relief. No proof of revenue loss during covid, because the business did not exist except for 6 weeks in 2019. Not qualified for PPP because no one was on payroll. etc… 

Supply chain issues. Having to figure out where to order materials from, with lead times of up to 6 months. Price increases of glass bottles, grain, freight, and more. 

Employee hiring issues. In spring of 2021, we were looking to hire two bartenders, we got hundreds of applications, of which Interviews were offered to anyone slightly qualified, dozens of messages sent. Only about 15 people scheduled interviews. Of those only 5 people showed up. We offered the job to one person immediately and they didn’t respond. Person 2 had already found a job. Person 3 showed up for one shift and then texted out the following day, then texted out again saying ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ and said she would be quitting. We did finally find a couple of really great employees, but not without a fight. 

Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Ballmer Peak Distillery?
We have a variety of different spirits we offer, and a tasting room where we use those spirits to make over 30 different cocktails! We specialize in handcrafted, small-batch unique spirits, that combine traditional concepts and methods with modern thinking and globally inspired flavors. I am most proud of our Australian-inspired Gin. I lived in Australia for 18 months and fell in love with the flavors and botanical offerings of their country. There are so many unique herbs and botanicals that people here haven’t even heard of, and I wanted to combine those flavors and concepts to a gin to show people that not all gins are going to be juniper bombs. What really sets us apart from others is our dedication to quality, sip-able spirits, and a dedication to community and sustainability. 

If we knew you growing up, how would we have described you?
Growing up I always liked experimenting and tinkering. I have fond memories of climbing to the tops of our backyard trees, playing with my family pets while also getting plenty of indoor time with video games and computers. An outgoing, goofy nerd that liked to make people laugh, and paid more attention to hobbies than schoolwork. 

Pricing:

• normal bottles of spirits range from $22-32
• cocktail prices range on average $5-10

Contact Info:

• Email: austin@ballmerpeakdistillery.com
• Website: https://ballmerpeakdistillery.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ballmerpeakdistillery/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BallmerPeakDistillery
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/ballmerpeakco
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/ballmer-peak-distillery-lakewood
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@ballmerpeakdistillery