The hall will be open Tuesday through Sunday until December, but the vendors inside remain optimistic that the new experiment will stick and they can have Denver homes for the foreseeable future. Getting the idea yet?īOOZ hall RiNo, a new space with five tasting rooms and bottle shops selling Colorado-made craft spirits and cocktails, is now open in the Denver neighborhhod that is best known for brewery hopping.īOOZ officially opened on June 23 with local makers 3 Hundred Days of Shine, Jack Rabbit Hill Farm, Rising Sun Distillery, State 38 Distilling and Wood’s High Mountain Distillery. It’s a bar crawl without ever going outside. Recent Metro State University of Denver graduate Dylan Hochstedler enjoys exploring and writing about the Colorado scene.Wednesday, May 10th 2023 Home Page Close Menu
#3 hundred days of shine full
Girard is fortunate that he has been able to grow his small business since it opened and couldn’t be more thankful for the support his family has provided. “Most EOD techs that do a full 20-year career don’t make it out with the same spouse. Some of the spirits include Rocky Mountain Sweet Tea, Firebomb and Colorado Harvest Honey Moonshine. Since then he has experimented with different flavors and techniques to bring fresh products to fans of 3 Hundred Days. He sat down with investors in January 2014 and sold his first Mason jar of moonshine on Black Friday 2014. Girard’s moonshine eventually ended up in the hands of an investor at a Broncos tailgating party, who was fascinated with the libation. Girard’s last deployment in Afghanistan was a successful one, not only because he discovered a new passion, but also because he made it back to American soil with his entire unit.Īs he transitioned to civilian life, he made a hobby of moonshining in his garage and experimenting with flavors and ingredients. Girard planted the roots for what would be his second career at 3 Hundred Days Distilling, named for the number of sunny days each year in Colorado. “There were some odd smells coming out of the room at times but nobody ever thought anything of it.”Īlthough he said his distillate in Afghanistan was never consumable, “I had a little locked-up room off to the side,” Girard said of his setup.
Using chemicals and different materials to make alcohol is what I was trying to do,” he said. “Chemical reactions from explosives fed my curiosity of making moonshine. Girard used a pressure cooker to distill his fermented root beer. After pitching his yeast into the root beer, Girard eventually had fermented alcohol.īecause pressure cookers were a common tool for insurgents to make bombs with, his company had a few extras that they used for field training. Girard’s company had a surplus of root beer stacked up, which he saw as a perfect medium to use as fermentable sugar. I just wanted to see if it would work or not.” “I spent my down time with a science experiment. “A lot of guys spent their down time playing videogames or watching movies,” he said. Girard had everything he needed to start distilling in Afghanistan except a hot plate and packet of distiller’s yeast, which he ordered from Amazon and had delivered directly to his compound.
He had heard stories of other soldiers producing homebrew while overseas, but he had other ideas. While deployed in Afghanistan in 2012, Girard’s EOD Company had its own compound. Girard spent the next decade on several deployments to Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan, all as an EOD team leader. “He was a friend, mentor and Uncle Mike to my daughter.” “Losing my buddy Mike was what drove me to invest so much time into being as knowledgeable as I could with this stuff so I could share it with the EOD community,” Girard said. That’s when Girard decided to get more serious about training with the devices. Mike Sutter, to an improvised explosive device in Iraq.
“Every device we pulled out of the ground was a life saved,” Girard said. The tight-knit group went from focusing on military explosives to defusing and disposing of homemade bombs that insurgents produced on the battlefield. Girard said that after 9/11, the direction of the EOD community shifted.
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