Kangaroo Island Spirits Installs New 300L Pot Still

Kangaroo Island Spirits received its new 300-litre pot still this week with hopes to increase production by ten times the amount the distillery is currently running at.

The eleven-year-old distillery, founded by Jon (brother of Bill Lark, founder of Lark Distillery in Tasmania) and Sarah Lark, is one of Australia’s first dedicated gin distilleries and recently produced its five-hundredth batch of its Wild Gin.

KIS has been producing its five gins in an 80-litre still until now. The new still, designed specifically to make gin, will help to increase the production of the distillery’s Old Tom Gin, which won the Champion Gin Trophy at the Australian Distilled Spirits Awards this year, as well as its O Gin, Mulberry Gin and Whisky Barrel Gin, with possibly more to follow.

“We won’t know until we’ve done some test runs - but we could be looking at ten times the capacity,” Jon told The Lead South Australia.

“The 80-litre still was running twice a day in double shifts – it was ridiculously small and there was no room for us to grow with that.”

Jon said that the new still shouldn’t affect the flavour of its gins, which have a noticeably Australian flavour with local botanicals such as the coastal daisy bush, native juniper and locally grown lemon myrtle and aniseed myrtle included in the distillate.

“A 300-litre still is quite small in the scheme of things so it definitely will still be craft. The products that come out of this new still will be absolutely the same gins - they may actually be smoother but I don’t think they will be discernably different.”

Production currently sits at around 20,000 bottles a year for the distillery, with distribution secured in over 200 bars, restaurants and bottle shops across Australia. The distillery also produces four vodkas and seven liqueurs.

Jon said that there is interest in KIS products from Hong Kong, Mainland China, the US, Spain, UK and New Zealand, while demand from the domestic market continues to grow.

While distribution is currently being managed directly by the distillery, Jon told drinks bulletin that it is looking to have sales representatives on the ground across Australia within the next 12 months.

“We are finding there is increasing demand for our products and export is certainly on the horizon but we keep surprising ourselves with how much the domestic market is sucking up, which is great,” he explained to The Lead.

“Once our still is in place we’ll do some trial runs this year of a rum and a whisky and there’s great potential on the island to work with KI Pure Grain and local beer guys to do some mash runs for us, which would be a nice co-operative arrangement for the whisky.”

Image: Jon and Sarah Lark

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