iStill Extractor Anniversary!
Today six years ago, we did the first run with the iStill Extractor. Time to celebrate and rejoice, as I feel it is a unique technology that further empowers the craft distilling industry.
So ... So if you wish to share your "Aha"-moment or anekdote, here's your chance to chime in. Just leave your story under this iStill Blog post. I'll start with mine:
A week prior to building the first ever iStill Extractor I met Willem. Why? He had posted a glass Soxhlet on a distillers forum, thinking it was a tool distillers could use. The distillers thought he was stupid, as glassware has no place in a craft distillery. I thought they were stupid for not seeing the brilliance ... and for not understanding it could just as easily (easier, in fact) be made out of stainless steel.
A very young Willem and his first lab coat ...
I invited Willem to show me the Extractor on a Friday and next Monday the team dropped everything they were doing in order to produce the first iStill Extractor. Why the hurry? I had Scottish visitors on Thursday, just a few days later, that produce an amazing strawberry liqueur and I felt they were the people who's opinion I needed on the Extractor's delivery of flavors (or not).
The first iStill Extractor was ready on Wednesday. I told Willem to run it for me, while I was entertaining our guests. He went out and bought all the strawberries he could find and then let the Extractor do it's thing, while I was selling bigger production stills to allow our Scottish customers to produce their own alcohol.
The very first strawberry liqueur we made with the iStill Extractor ...
As the day went by, they wanted to know what the guy in the lab coat was doing, so I told them to go check it out. "Amazing, what a coincidence, he is making strawberry liqueur!", they said. "Well, not really a coincidence," I told them, "This is a new column we designed and we want your opinion, as strawberry experts, on if it delivers on taste."
Kecia and Dougal tasted the liqueur we made and rated it as 25% more flavorful than anything they had tasted before, as I remember it. I asked them how long it took them to make their strawberry liqueur and they said it took them about six weeks. I informed them that we had just made ours in under six hours, upon which they said: "And we need that all-new iStill Extractor too!" 
We now sell our Extractor technology all over the world ...
www.iStill.com
