Have you ever wondered why a night enjoying mass-produced beer, wine, or spirits can leave you feeling foggy the next day, while a night sipping farm-to-bottle craft spirits from Okanagan Spirits leaves you feeling fresh?
We hear it constantly from our friends and loyal customers: "Your spirits are the only ones I can drink without feeling bad the next day."
While we can’t make medical claims, there is actual science—and a massive amount of financial sacrifice—behind why our spirits feel as "clean" as they taste. It ultimately comes down to two major factors: The Cuts and The Copper.
1. The Ruthless "Hearts" Cut
Distillation is an art of separation. When alcohol runs off the still, it doesn't come out as one uniform liquid. It comes in three distinct parts:
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The Heads: The first part of the run. It is volatile, harsh, and contains compounds like acetone and methanol. (This is the stuff that gives you a pounding headache).
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The Hearts: The middle run. This is pure, sweet ethanol with the best flavour profiles.
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The Tails: The end run. It smells like wet cardboard and contains "fusel oils" that can make you feel groggy and sluggish.
Most commercial distilleries widen their cuts to maximize profit, keeping some of the Heads and a larger amount of the Tails in the bottle to increase volume. At Okanagan Spirits, we are ruthless. We make aggressive cuts, keeping only the absolute Hearts.
We "throw away" more alcohol than almost any other distillery. But we don’t actually waste it.
From "Heads" to Highway Instead of bottling those headache-inducing impurities, we process that waste alcohol to fuel our company cars.
Does it make financial sense? No. It costs us nearly $10 per liter to create this fuel. But it means two things: we are doing our part to save the planet, and you aren't drinking the impurities.
2. The "Godstilla" Advantage
Equipment matters just as much as the process. We use traditional German-made copper pot stills. While copper is notoriously inefficient compared to modern industrial stainless steel columns, it is essential for quality. Copper reacts chemically with the spirit, stripping out sulphur compounds (another headache culprit) and refining the texture.
But we didn't just buy any still; we commissioned a legend.
Our setup, affectionately named "Godstilla," is 1 of only 2 ever made. It is a meticulous redesign of the trusted German copper pot still, engineered with input from experts at General Electric and Siemens. We simply don't know of a better set of stills in existence.
For example, our state-of-the-art 50-plate vodka still allows us to distill up to 96.4% purity. That is the statistical limit for alcohol production—the purest it can physically get—and an impressive feat for a copper pot system.
The Bottom Line
When you drink Okanagan Spirits, you aren't just tasting the fruit or grain; you are tasting the result of refusing to compromise. We invested in the best technology in the world, and we throw away the bad stuff so you don't have to drink it.
You get the Hearts. Our cars get the rest.
From our family to yours… Cheers!
