Page 20 - Flathead Beacon // 6.25.14

20 | JUNE 25, 2014 FLATHEADBEACON.COM AEn Afternoon at Fort Hungry Horse
very good fort needs a cannon, at least ac- cording to Randy Loff.
On a recent afternoon, Loff and a few friends were sitting in lawn chairs and cracking open beers in front of Fort Hungry Horse, a sec- ond-hand shop that Loff has owned since 1986. He has worked as an auctioneer and pawn man his entire life, just like his dad and uncles be- fore him, and there isn’t anything Loff won’t sell.
Inside the cluttered pandemo- nium that is Fort Hungry Horse, you’ll find just about everything. There are lanterns of every shape and size, hats, horns, a dead alliga- tor, a 21-foot snake skin and, yes, a cannon. This day, Loff and a few of the regulars proudly took a break from their beers to roll the contrap- tion out into the parking lot to fire off a few rounds.
“We usually wait until the Fourth of July to launch it, but it doesn’t take a special occasion for us to bring out the cannon,” one of the guys said as he prepared to light a round with his cigarette.
With a burst of smoke and sparks, the lit charge was thrown down the metal tube and everyone scurried for cover. A few moments
later the charge exploded, landing in the parking lot of the volunteer fire department in downtown Hun-
gry Horse.
“We’re kind of independent up
here,” Loff said.
Randy Loff, the self-proclaimed mayor of Hungry Horse, pictured outside Fort Hungry Horse. GREG LINDSTROM | FLATHEAD BEACON
MT odern-Day Moonshiners
he story of how the Glacier Distilling Company came to be goes a little something
like this: Nicolas Lee and a few friends were sitting around a cabin on a cold winter night talking and drinking whiskey. Eventually, the conversation turned toward how they would protect The Canyon in case of an apocalypse.
“We realized we would be OK if we had enough booze and bullets,” Lee said.
Like much of Montana, bullets are plentiful in The Canyon, but the booze proved to be the lacking com- modity. Someone suggested they open a distillery. Everyone laughed, kept drinking and talking and even- tually went to bed. But Lee, Lauren Oscilowski and Pat Cattelino never forgot the idea.
“It really started as a joke, but then it made sense,” said Lee, now the owner of Glacier Distilling in Coram.
In 2010, Glacier Distilling be- came the first legal distillery in The Canyon. Josephine Doody, who lived up on Harrison Creek in Glacier National Park in the early 1900s, made the first spirits in The Canyon. Legend has it she would
have her products delivered by rail- roaders on the Great Northern Rail- way and, even though everyone in town knew what she was doing, no one ever told the authorities.
Taking a page from Doody’s playbook, Glacier Distilling pro- duced an unaged white whiskey that could be created within a few months, instead of the years needed for many spirits.
To make whiskey, Lee and his crew cook grain in water to create a mash where yeast can grow. The cooled mash is left in a fermenta-
tion tank for up to a week where it becomes a wash. The wash is boiled in a specialty pot and alcohol va- pors rise to the top of the pot where they eventually condense back into a liquid. The liquid, called distillate, comes out in three phases called the heads, the hearts and the tails. The hearts is the cream of the crop and the true art of distilling is knowing when to capture the heart. After that the alcohol is aged in wooden barrels.
“It’s so exciting when you open a barrel and stick your nose in it and
FROM LEFT: Lauren Oscilowski checks the initial gravity of a beverage at Glacier Dis- tilling in Coram on May 20; Whiskey barrels in storage at Glacier Distilling. GREG LINDSTROM | FLATHEAD BEACON
it smells exactly like you thought it would,” Lee said. “It’s so satisfying.” The distillery makes a wide va- riety of whiskies, including Glacier Due, Bad Rock Rye, North Fork and Wheatfish Whiskey, which is based on Great Northern Brewing Co.’s beer of the same name. Lee said he also likes to experiment and two years ago they made a plum fruit brandy. While Glacier Distillery’s products are available in some stores and bars, Lee said he doesn’t
want to expand too much.
“You can order anything online
now, but I think it’s really nostalgic to have a product that you have to go somewhere to get,” he said.
THE CANYON