LOCAL FEATURE: BROKEN OAK DISTILLERY

We chatted with Patrick Chute, co-founder and head distiller of Broken Oak Distillery. Broken Oak was founded right here the heart of the peace country, Grande Prairie, Alberta. Read our interview to find out how Broken oak came to be, the best way to enjoy haskap berry liqueur, and how a road trip turned into a business.

When did Broken Oak open and what made you decide to start your own distillery?

“We opened officially in March of 2019, took us about 6-8 months of doing building upgrades and getting our equipment installed and then me and my business partners were both hobby distillers on the side, and we had a lot of fun doing it and people enjoyed what we made so we decided to take the next step into making it an actual business.”

That’s really amazing, I love seeing people turn their passions into a business. Can you give us a run down of what all products you carry? I’m a big fan of your blood orange vodka.

“That’s sort of been a fan favourite since day one! But we do a regular vodka like everyone else, we have a few flavours, the blood orange, coconut and a dill pickle. The dill pickle is strictly for caesers, nothing else. Then we have a couple different gins! Prairie Berry Gin with Saskatoon Haskap berries right from our backyard here. Then our newest one is the Haskap Liqueur which is a liqueur made from haskap berries.”

Oh are those haaskap berries from Brokentine Orchard?

“Yeah! We’ve become good friends with Kreg out there from Brokentine.”

What inspires you?

“Going back to Brokentine, we look to our community for inspiration. Before we started distilling here in Grande Prairie, I had never heard of a haskap berry. We heard of a local producer making pretty good meads with his haskap berries and they’re damn tasty berries. We found inspiration from him once we got into the distilling world.”

I’m excited to try the haskap liqueur, I haven’t yet but it’s on my list.

“It’s good just on the rocks, and a lot of people have been talking about putting it over vanilla ice cream cause it’s sort of sweet and tart.”

That’ll be how I try it. That sounds so good. Now, can you walk me through how the products are made? In simplified terms.

“Haha! I’ll give you the .99 cent version. For our basic vodka you start with a wheat where we mill it in house here, put it in our mash house with water heated up to about 90 degrees; what that does is break down the starches in the wheat to fermentable sugars, we add some enzymes and yeast and put it in a fermenter where it’ll sit for 45 days. The yeast feeds off the sugars and create alcohol as a by product. From there we pump it into our still, it’s 200 galleons and then we run it, which is just separating the alcohol and the water. Alcohol evaporates at a lower temperature then water, so when you start pulling it, all the alcohol fumes will come off, and you condensate those and collect them in the barrel. That’s the .99 cent version.”

Oh man, that’s quite the process, even with your .99 cent version.

“It sounds more complicated than it is, you have three steps, you have the mash, the fermentation then the distillation. Not nearly as complicated as it sounds.”

This is kind of a broad question, but what Broken Oak’s story? I know you have a business partner.

“Well myself I came out here from Ontario about 13 years ago. It started as a random road trip, I had a friend driving out here who asked what I was doing for the next couple weeks. I didn’t have a lot on my plate, so I thought I’d come out for a couple weeks. Then I took a job here, and never left.”

Wow.

“I know right, my first job here is where I met my business partner Shawn, we were both truck drivers at DC energy. And from there we remained friends and a few years ago we started making beer and wine and stuff like that, and then decided to start making spirits.”

So you went on a road trip and never left, and now you have a distilling business! 

“I always joke, I’ve never moved here I’m just on a prolonged road trip.”

Haha! I love it. Next question, what makes Broken Oak different?

“Every distillery has their different spins on different products. We try to focus on keeping ours as local as possible. We get our wheat from Mike Vavrek at Vavy Valley Farms just down Emerson trail. And again, the haskap berries from Brokentine.”

For those who don’t know, Brokentine is located West of Beaverlodge, a small town that’s about a 30 minute drive from Grande Prairie.

“Our spiced brum we make isn’t made from sugar cane molasses, it’s made from sugar beet molasses. The number one reason it comes from Taber, AB at Roger Sugar. All of our raw ingredients at this point have come from Alberta, that makes us a little different because we can’t ask people to support us locally, if we don’t support our own local city first, and our province second.”

I love that. Supporting local is what we’re all about. What is your personal favourite product and why do you recommend it?

“Right now, I’ve been getting down on the Prairie Berry Gin. Simply because it’s loaded with lots of good flavours. It has the haskap Saskatoon berry in there and some nice balanced gin. Drink it with soda water, not tonic. The flavour with a little bit of bubbly soda water is delicious.”

That sounds absolutely delicious. Thanks for talking with me Patrick.

Thanks for taking the time out of your day to read our interview with Patrick Chute, co-owner/founder and head distiller of Broken Oak Distillery. You can find their full line up of products at both of our liquor store locations.

Article by our marketing team member, Kelsey Gronhovd