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Project "Rawhide"!

09 November 2022

Introduction

Here's an update on Project "Rawhide". The name doesn't really do justice to the leather that's actually involved, but it does sound so much better! Leather on the iStills? Yeah, that's what we are investigating. Time for a deeper dive ...

The goal

What do we intend to achieve with this project? Simple: we want to start offering more color and fabric options. Henry Ford famously said, a little over a century ago, that his Ford Model-T could be ordered in any color ... as long as it was black. And so far, in a way, the same holds true for the iStills. They come with black insulation and that's it.

As we grow, with now over 1100 iStills in use around the globe, we want to offer our customers more opportunities for customization. If you want to give your iStill a personal touch, we want to see if we can support that. With this project, we hope to create a future where our customers can add multiple colors and textures to their iStills. From iStill Mini to iStill 5000.

Starting points

So why leather and why not simply choose a different color of insulation? Because we strongly feel that form should follow function. Researching other insulation colors taught us this: the black version we developed has the best R-value. Put differently: our black insulation provides better insulation than any other color of insulation. So the insulation stays the well-known iStill variety. We'll add leather of a different color on top of that, for those that want to differentiate their stills.

Why leather? It is an amazing product. Natural, full of texture and smell, history and craft. The skins we use are from Woerden-bred calfs. Woerden is where iStill HQ is located. Up, close, and personal. Or at least very local. More locality? Saskia de Vries is the craftswoman responsible for the "leatherification" of the iStills. Saskia works with vegetable-tanned leather, believes in slow design, and small batch production.

Project status

We are currently "rawhiding" the first iStill Mini. The iStill Mini is first, because - as it is our smallest unit - it provides the biggest challenge both technically and as a business case. This first unit will be used in the upcoming iStill University Master Distillers Course, so that we can find out if leather provides the durable solution we are looking for. Saskia is almost finished, so the testing will start soon.

When testing is concluded, and the results are positive, we'll create a definitive business case for this project as well as for the bigger production oriented iStills. The intention is to make this an option on the iStill, whichever one it is, you order by the end of the year.

Calf hide from Woerden ...