Clearly superior

WASILLA — It’s been a good year for the Glacier Creek Distillery.

Though the business has been around six years, it’s only been pumping out vodka for about 11 months. But in that time it has entered nearly every Alaskan liquor store, rolled out one new product with more on the way, and moved into some of the Western states.

“I thought that I would sell 500 bottles in my first year in business, but I sold 500 bottles in my first week,” said one of the distillery’s founders, Toby Foster.

He said he started the distillery in his back yard in Palmer, cobbling the place together out of machinery he bought as he could afford it.

“It looked like Whoville,” he said. “It was cold, it was dark, it was terrible.”

Foster said he plowed every cent he’d ever made into the business — he even cashed in his 401(k) — after an accident in his job as a medevac pilot pushed him into a new career. He said he brewed his own beer for years but that the brewery market — and the winery market, for that matter — is overcrowded in Alaska.

He wanted to do something different and decided on vodka. And vodka has been good to him, though, he said, he doesn’t make a lot of money. He buys stuff for the distillery as he can, but all the potatoes are cleaned and chopped and the bottles are labeled by hand.

But it pays the bills and Foster hasn’t had to take on any debt.

Very recently, the distillery moved its operations into an airplane hanger tucked away in a neighborhood off the Wasilla end of the Palmer-Wasilla Highway. Friday, Foster said, they weren’t quite up and running at the new facility, but the bigger space gives them room to expand.

Their main vodka, Permafrost, is made from potatoes — Valley potatoes.

Foster said the vodka retails for $50 or so. But there’s a cheaper variety they’re working to get into more liquor stores made from grain, called Frostbite.

He said he likes working with grain more than with potatoes.

“Potatoes are messy, they’re hard to use and the yield is very low,” he said.

Grain gives him 100 times more ethanol than potatoes, and there’s not all the peeling and cutting to do. Grain can be boiled up in 30 minutes whereas potatoes take 10 hours.

But potatoes, he said, yield a better product.

Still, he said, Frostbite, “beats the heck out of just about anything on the market.” And it’s cheaper — just $23 or so per bottle.

“The customers and our distributors have demanded a cheaper product,” he said.

Soon, Frostbite will also be made from local products, distilled from a load of grain he managed to track down in Delta Junction. That was a lucky find, Foster said, since most of the barley grown in that area is feed barley, not suitable for human consumption.

The demand for a cheaper product, Foster said, will eventually be applied to the Permafrost vodka. In a couple weeks, he said, they’ll be putting it into a different, pre-printed bottle, 40,000 of which are due to arrive soon from China. In the new bottle, he said, Permafrost will go for $35 to $39.    

Foster said that in December he’ll also roll out a number of new products. There will be four flavored vodkas — raspberry, blueberry, cranberry and Alaskan birch.

He’s also branching out into gin, which he plans to call Shiver. Vodka and gin are different beasts entirely.

Distiller Theo Graber, formerly a machinist and formerly of the brewing and dairy industries, said that vodka is a neutral — essentially ethanol and water.

“What you’re going for with vodka is clean and smooth,” Graber said.

But with gin, Foster said, flavors are infused using botanicals like juniper and coriander.

And just how good is Foster’s product? He pointed to a review from the Beverage Tasting Institute, which rated Permafrost 96 out of 100.

“We blew out Gray Goose, we slammed Kettle One,” he said.

The key, he said, is the water. And Glacier Creek Distillery uses glacier ice pulled out of Prince William Sound in its product.

“Here in Alaska, we have some awesome water,” he said.

The review says that the vodka has “aromas of custard and creamy meringue” and notes “hints of powdered sugar and wet river stones.”

The distillery’s president, Scotti MacDonald, said she isn’t so sure she can detect all those things.

“You have to get creative when you’re reviewing something that’s supposed to be neutral,” she said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.