Distillery Tour & Tasting

Description

Distillery Tours Near Destin, Fort Walton Beach & Pensacola

Ever stood in a liquor store wondering what actually separates a craft spirit from everything else on the shelf? We have the answer — and it starts with a tour of Timber Creek Distillery.

We’re located in Crestview, FL — 45 minutes from Destin, 30 minutes from Fort Walton Beach, and an hour from Pensacola. We’re the only true grain-to-glass craft distillery on the Florida Panhandle. Every step of production happens right here — from the 50,000 pounds of grain we take delivery of, down to the bottle we hand you at the end of the tasting.

This isn’t a showroom. There’s no decorative still in the corner. Every fermenter, pump, valve, and barrel you’ll see on this tour actively makes the spirits you’ll taste at the end. That’s the whole point.

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You Roll Up, We Pour You a Drink

Every tour starts the same way. You come in, we welcome you into the tasting room, and we get you a drink. If you booked the Craft Cocktail Experience, that first cocktail is already included. If not, we usually have something available to purchase while we get oriented.

There’s no rush, no clipboard, no corporate orientation video. Just a real conversation about what you’re about to see. Once everyone’s settled, we head outside — and that’s where the story starts.

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Where It All Begins — Grain & Raw Ingredients

We take delivery of up to 50,000 pounds of grain at a time — corn, wheat, barley, or rye depending on what we’re running. For rum, we bring in up to 5,000 gallons of molasses. You’ll see exactly where those raw materials arrive and how we move them into our on-site silos using transfer augers.

It sounds industrial, because it is. But it’s also the foundation of everything. The quality of what ends up in your glass starts with decisions made right here.

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The Hopper & Weighing the Batch

Back inside, we start at the hopper — where we weigh out 2,000 pounds of grain per batch. The grain bill defines the flavor character of the finished spirit before we’ve added a drop of water.

Our bourbon mash differs from our rye whiskey mash. Our vodka mash differs from both. We cook each grain individually at different temperatures. Most distilleries don’t do this. We do, because it shows up in the glass.

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The Mash Tun & Steam Boiler

The grain goes into our mash tun with 700 gallons of water, heated by our 1.5 million BTU steam boiler. We heat the water to the exact temperature needed to gel-size the starches in that specific grain. Gel-sizing breaks open the starch granules and makes them ready for the enzyme work ahead.

Before the grain hits the water, we run it through our double roller mill. This crushes the grain and exposes the endosperm without turning everything into powder. Most US distilleries use a hammer mill that pulverizes grain into flour. We use a double roller because it gives us more control, a cleaner separation later, and a better-tasting spirit.

A propeller inside the mash tun keeps everything moving and in suspension while the hot water does its work.

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Enzymes — Turning Grain Into Sugar

Once the grain is gel-sized, we run a three-step enzyme addition sequence. Most small distilleries skip this entirely. We don’t.

First, we add alpha amylase to break long-chain starches into simpler sugars. Then we drop the temperature and add beta amylase to break those sugars into smaller, more fermentable chains. Finally, we add a flow enzyme to break down proteins — improving flow through our pumps, helping the lauter run cleaner, and giving us better yield per batch.

We do this because we can taste the difference. If we’re going to call ourselves grain-to-glass, every decision needs to show up in the glass.

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The Lauter Tun — Separating Solids from Liquid

After the enzyme work, the mash moves to the lauter tun. Solids and liquids separate here. The spent grain comes out the front and goes straight to local pig and cattle farms. Nothing gets wasted.

The liquid — now called wort — flows out from below. It passes through a heat exchanger that drops the temperature into fermentation range, then moves into the fermenters. At this point it smells like a warm bakery. Sweet, clean, and full of potential.

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Fermentation — Where Ethanol Is Born

Timber Creek has roughly 10,000 gallons of fermentation capacity across our tall stainless steel fermenters. Each fermenter holds 1,300 gallons. We pitch yeast into the wort, and within hours fermentation kicks off.

Yeast consumes the fermentable sugars and produces ethanol and carbon dioxide as byproducts. On most tour days you can see the fermenters actively working — bubbling, radiating heat, filling the room with the unmistakable smell of active fermentation.

By the end of a typical production week, we have around 5,000 gallons of fermented wash ready to run through the still. It looks and smells like an unhopped beer. What happens next turns it into something worth drinking.

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The Pot Still & Scottish-Style Worm Condenser

We pump 660 gallons at a time into our traditional copper pot still. It features a bell-shaped flat head and a Scottish-style worm condenser — a long coiled copper tube submerged in cold water. It’s one of the oldest condenser designs in distillation history, and we chose it deliberately.

Worm condensers produce a heavier, more texturally complex distillate than modern designs. The character it adds to our spirits is real and intentional.

Here’s a detail we love sharing: the top of our pot head sits about a quarter inch higher than the worm entry point. The heaviest flavor oils — the ones that just barely reach the top of the still — carry through into the distillate rather than falling back down. A small detail with a real impact on richness and flavor.

We run four to five stripping runs through the pot still, building up low wines at around 35% ABV. Once we have enough, we move to the finishing run.

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Temperature Differential Distillation — The Finishing Run

The finishing run separates the compounds we don’t want from the ethanol we’re keeping. We heat the still just below the evaporation point of ethanol. The first things to come over — the foreshots and heads — include acetone and methanol.

Acetone strips the oils right off your fingertips. You know it from nail polish remover. Methanol tastes like wet cardboard — flat, wrong, and unmistakable. Neither belongs in your glass.

We identify the transition from heads to hearts by temperature and by taste. The moment we’re through it, we flip the valve. Everything after that point is drinking ethanol — clean, flavorful, and exactly what we’ve been working toward since the grain came off the truck.

A finishing run produces approximately 250 gallons of finished distillate. We bottle some as vodka, gin, or rum. The rest goes into barrels.

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Barreling & the Rickhouse

For whiskey and bourbon, the finished distillate goes into a holding tank while we hydrate our barrels. We fill new charred oak barrels with water first, swelling the wood to create a proper seal. Then we fill them with spirit and stack them in our rickhouse to age.

The Florida Panhandle climate is unique for whiskey aging. Hot, humid summers and mild winters create dramatic temperature swings. Spirit pushes in and out of the wood faster than it would in Kentucky. Our bourbon and whiskey don’t try to taste like something made somewhere else. They taste like Florida made them — and that’s exactly the point.

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The Tasting — Everything We Make, Right Here Where We Made It

After the tour, we come back to the tasting room and work through the full Timber Creek lineup. You’ve just spent an hour watching how every one of these spirits was made. That context changes the way they taste.

We start with our Florida Rum — made from molasses, distilled on the same pot still you just walked past. Rich, approachable, and unmistakably handmade. Then our Florida Vodka — grain-to-glass, distilled on site, and clean in a way that makes a real argument for why the source material matters.

Next comes our Florida Gin — botanical and bright, built on our house spirit base. It works in a simple gin and tonic just as well as it does in a complex craft cocktail. Then we get to the whiskeys.

Our Florida Whiskey and Florida Bourbon are the heart of what we do. Barrel-aged on site. Shaped by the Florida climate. Poured right here where the grain came in as raw material. Tasting them here — with everything you’ve just seen behind you — hits differently. That’s not marketing. It’s just what happens when you understand what went into the glass.

The tasting is guided. We walk you through each spirit, explain what you’re tasting and why, and answer every question you’ve got. By the time you leave, you’ll know more about craft spirits than most people who drink them every day.

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Upgrade to the Craft Cocktail Experience

Want to go further? Upgrade to our 90-minute Tour, Tasting & Craft Cocktail Experience and we’ll add three full-sized handcrafted cocktails to your visit.

Our team walks you through the technique and thinking behind each build. What makes a spirit work in a cocktail. How balance and dilution affect flavor. Why certain ingredients complement certain spirits. We use seasonal, locally inspired ingredients — blueberry shrub old fashioneds, fresh citrus gin cocktails, rum builds that show what a Florida-made spirit can really do.

Includes:

• Full behind-the-scenes distillery tour
• Guided tasting of all Timber Creek spirits
• Three full-sized handcrafted cocktails
• Cocktail technique and balance tips from our team
• Seasonal, locally inspired ingredients

Duration: ~90 minutes | 21+ only | $30 per person

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More Ways to Spend the Day

The distillery tour is the centerpiece, but it’s not the only thing we’ve got going on. Also on site:

• Axe Throwing — walk-ins welcome
• Wine & Chocolate Tasting
• Bourbon Blending Experience — blend your own custom bourbon to take home

Groups, couples, corporate outings, bachelorette parties — we’ve hosted all of them. Make a full afternoon of it.

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Plan Your Visit

Timber Creek Distillery is at 6451 Lake Ella Road, Crestview, FL 32536 — just off I-10, central to the entire Florida Panhandle.

Hours:
Monday – Wednesday: 8am – 2pm
Friday: 8am – 2pm
Saturday: 10am – 4pm
Thursday & Sunday: Closed

Reserve your spot using the booking tool above. For same-day availability or group bookings, call (408) 439-0973.