Jason Gaidies, who just opened Joppenbergh Gap Distilling in Tillson in mid-November, hasn’t given up his day job just yet. But if the place really takes off, he might have to.
A Lomontville native who grew up in Stone Ridge, Gaidies learned to work on airplane engines at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida. He came back home to Ulster County, got a job fixing private jets at Stewart Airport 25 years ago and has been working there ever since.
Gaidies describes himself as the sort of hands-on guy who always needs to be making something. Whenever he takes an interest in a craft — blacksmithing, knitting, 3-D printing — he proceeds to teach himself how to do it. That’s how he learned to make moonshine: “Ten years of reading books and looking into how distilling works,” he says. “I’m 100 percent self-taught.”
It all started in the early 2000s, when a childhood friend of his from Stone Ridge got married to a Long Island woman whose father was legendary NASCAR driver and team owner Tom Baldwin. The bride’s brother, Tommy Baldwin, Jr., handed Gaidies “a jar with strawberries floating in it.” It was his first taste of home-distilled moonshine, and he liked it. “It was something that we don’t have here: hot, super-sweet and super-flavorful.”
The irony here is that Gaidies can’t drink a full serving of anything alcoholic without getting sick, due to an enzyme deficiency. But he can sample. And he was intrigued enough by that taste of strawberry moonshine that he got to tinkering, with the intent of sharing the experience with friends. “I went into my father’s basement, found some copper and built a still,” he relates.
Having already experimented with winemaking, he used a supply of homemade wine coolers as the base for his first batch of moonshine, which he flavored with strawberries. “Then I made some more. Everyone loved it and wanted more of it.”
Wishing to refine his techniques, he decided to take a home distilling class at Pantano’s Wine Grapes & Home Brew Shop in New Paltz. But the instructor didn’t show up, and host Jerry Pantano urged Gaidies to take over the class. He didn’t feel ready at the time, but he should have known then that serious distilling was in his future.
When the scheduled time slot was nearly over, the advertised instructor finally appeared: “He was this old hillbilly, and he forgot that he was supposed to teach the class and went out duck hunting. He came in with mud all over his boots.” What remained of the session consisted more of yarns about the moonshining life than of teaching practical techniques, and Gaidies and Pantano agreed that it had been a disaster.
The next class had Gaidies at the helm, and he began to take his new hobby much more seriously. “It was not technically legal,” he notes. “I stopped when I applied for a legal permit.”
By 2021, Gaidies felt ready to have his mettle tested. He submitted his application to compete on the Discovery Channel competition program Moonshiners: Master Distillers. “It took about six months,” he says, largely because he didn’t fit any of the profiles of the TV producers’ “favorite combo” of a backwoods moonshiner, a woman and a professional. Eventually he was put on standby for a program focusing on grappa, and then another on honey whiskey, before being called up for a show on mocha moonshine.
“One day I got a letter with an address and a hotel reservation. I had to drive down to Tennessee in about two weeks,” he recalls. “When I got there, in the parking lot was a ’59 pickup with a still in the back. It was like hillbilly summer camp. We’d all sit around the outdoor firepit until 4 or 5 in the morning.”
His crash course in how to make moonshine taste like coffee started off unpromisingly: “I tried to distill coffee, but it gets a burnt, nasty flavor. So, I bought roasted grains from Pantano’s. I use all local grains in the mash.” He experimented some more, found a process that worked and replicated it for the TV contest.
Starting with the roasted grain mash, “I was able to get a coffee flavor into the first run with no coffee.” The judges were impressed. On the second run, he put hot cocoa mix and espresso powder to be steamed in the chamber of the still called the thumper. “That way you get more chocolate flavor, but still a clear product.” The final flavoring stage involved the direct addition of “chocolate, fresh-brewed coffee and cream.” The result? “I won my episode: Caffeinated Shine.” You can find a link to Season 3, Episode 19 at https://go.discovery.com/show/moonshiners-master-distiller-discovery.
“Before that, I didn’t have any aspirations to go pro, but it made me think about opening a distillery of my own,” Gaidies says. “I’m not here to make money. I used my money to turn this place into a distillery.”
This place, a mock Tudor decorated with Tyrolean bric-a-brac located at 713 Route 32, had been built by a CIA graduate named Mark Howells on the site of a notoriously nasty dive bar known as Cappy’s Happy Hour. Howells reinvented the location as the Toad Holly Pub, building all the fine woodwork himself, including a handsome mahogany bar. But the new business never really took off, and “closed due to divorce” after about two years, according to Gaidies. “I approached him in November or December of 2022. It had been ten years vacant at that point.”
Since leasing the building, Gaidies has put plenty of sweat equity into renovating the interior to evoke the blue-collar flavor of Rosendale’s cement-mining era, reflected in the new business name. “I wanted to make it comfortable, homey and inviting,” he says. The rooms are furnished with cozy clusters of antique chairs and couches, conducive to intimate gatherings of friends. On the walls and on cabinet shelves are bits of Rosendale cement memorabilia – some authentic, some recreated. “I found some fruit crates for free and engraved them into dynamite crates,” Gaidies says. Customers can also get a close-up look at a gorgeous copper still hand-built for him by Kevin Gordon of Thunder Road Copper in Tennessee, who “builds all the stills for Moonshiners.”
While the former restaurant kitchen isn’t geared up at present, Gaidies’ friend Tim Dean, proprietor of My Lil Food Truck, has set up My Lil Food Hut next to Joppenbergh Gap Distilling’s rear patio, offering burgers, sandwiches, tacos and quesadillas. But the main attractions are the “moontinis” served at the bar, using moonshine-style spirits distilled on-premises “exactly the same as it’s made back in the woods.” Unaged Corn Whiskey and Apple Pie Moonshine are also for sale by the bottle or Mason jar.
If someone in your party doesn’t go for cocktails made with hard liquor, there are also beer, wine and cider available, as well as non-alcoholic drinks. Joppenbergh Gap also sells cookies from Sweet Lisuzza, soaps from Bovine Divine, Banta’s Maple Syrup and BoneHollow BladeWorks Knives and Jewelry. “Everything is sourced hyper-locally,” says Gaidies.
Joppenbergh Gap Distilling is open from 5 to 8 p.m. on Friday, 2 to 8 p.m. on Saturday and 2 to 6 p.m. on Sunday 2-6. To learn more, visit www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61555716511905 or www.instagram.com/joppenbergh_gap_distilling.
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