Adrian — A distillery with roots in northern Michigan and a storefront in downtown Adrian, the distillery aims to expand its customer base in southern Michigan, potentially opening a distillery facility in Lennawee County. We aim to
Mammoth Distilling, which opened at 108 E. Maumee St. Adrian on November 20, 2020, operates a distillation hub in Southern Michigan to make more products available to those who enjoy vodka, gin and whiskey. I am considering doing it. they.
Mammoth produces its own alcohol and is a popular destination in northern Michigan, with stores in Bay Harbor, Bellaire, and Traverse City. Mammoths are born in Central Lake and Adrian is the southernmost location. By expanding its operations and adding distilleries south of the state capital, its owners hope to reach more customers throughout southern Michigan.
“All of our production is in Central Lake. Our other tasting rooms in the state are in the heart of (Central Lake). We continue to expand throughout (Southern Half of Michigan). So we just want to have a production hub here and distribute it to our stores,” Mammoth Distillery general manager Jude Walther said in an interview. “There are some new things going on. It took us about a year and a half to get to this point, but we are close.”
As one of the first steps in the expansion process, Mammoth is looking at some of the best locations to operate its distillery. So far, frontline areas include Chelsea, Adrian and Tecumseh, according to Adrian City Administrator Greg Elliott, who discussed the Mammoth expansion with the Adrian City Council on Dec. 19. .
Elliott said Mammoth and the city have been in talks about expanding the business for some time. He said conversations were underway about the possibility of Mammoth opening a distillery on just over five acres at the end of Enterprise Drive in Adrian’s Industrial Park along U.S. Route 223 near the entrance to Adrian University. .
Certain locations on Enterprise Drive have great synergies with the university, Elliott says. The university could work with Mammoth on programming related to distillation science, he said.
Tecumseh has also offered Mammoth a location within its industrial park, Elliott said. Discussions and negotiations are ongoing between all parties.
“Nothing has been decided yet,” Walser said on Dec. 30. “There’s still a lot of moving parts.”
Elliott said the distillery itself will be an industrial operation, with three or four trucks coming in and out of the facility each day. It is a strategy that is impossible in the business district of the downtown area.
Meanwhile, Lennawee County is ideal for mammoths, said Jay Marks, executive director of Downtown Adrian Main Street.
“The (mammoth) waste is spent grain,” he said. “The largest consumer of spent grain is dairy farms.
Commissioner Rudd Strayer has lost several times in his seven years on the city council to companies that want to do something similar to what Adrian is aiming for with Mammoth Distilling, and ultimately He told Elliot to negotiate a sale with Mammoth in order to keep his investment in Adrian, and also negotiate with Adrian’s production hub.
“I don’t want to see you lose this time,” Strayer said.
The location in the industrial park is backed up by the Maple Woods Manufacture Home Community with homes on Beechwood Drive, a road just west of Enterprise Drive. The mobile home community is surrounded by land surrounded by industrial zones, Elliot says.
When Commissioner Mary Roberts asked if the smell of the distillery would be a problem for nearby residents, both Elliot and Marks said it shouldn’t be a problem.
All odors are unique to a person in some way, but industries in general give off odors, Elliot said. It is the duty of people, he said, to recognize what is in
“This area has been designated an industrial zone for a long time. We are not creating anything new here,” he said. “If we were rezoning the land for industrial use, it would be a whole different story.”
Marks said the smell that a distillery should emit is that of a bakery. There should be no strong alcohol odors remaining in the air.
“I don’t think there’s any harmful smell coming out of it,” he said.