Barrelhouse 6 Distillery – Kara Mackey (Founder and Head Distiller)
Kara Mackey, Mother, Wife, Engineer, Lawyer – and Master Distiller!
Inside the Barrelhouse 6 Distillery tasting room, two full glass accordion doors span the width of the space, framing the vista, and Mackey herself is standing behind the bar, telling the story of how she started the business. She has followed a zigzagging career path since her student days at Alfred University. As an undergraduate, she switched from pre-med to ceramic engineering, a decision that pleased her father, an engineer himself. After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in ceramic engineering, she worked as an environmental engineer, then decided to study law. She earned her law degree and worked as a staff attorney for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. A change of administrations in Albany forced her out the door. She remembers telling herself she would never again grant anyone control over how she earned a living, and she opened a law office in Glen Falls, NY.
After 17 years, she stepped away from running her own practice and started down a winding path to founding the Distillery. She had stumbled across a PBS documentary on the budding craft spirits industry in New York State. Something about the process of distilling alcohol from grains – producing a beverage that people have been consuming for millennia – struck her as creative, scientific, and “really cool.” Her next step was locating and visiting an artisanal distillery, to see for herself how spirits were distilled from a fermenting mash. “That’s when I was smitten,” she says. “This idea of owning a distillery just got into me and wouldn’t let go.” She began taking classes and seminars in distilling, blending, and rickhouse management. In 2019, the company broke ground for the construction of the distillery and tasting room with breathtaking views Keuka Lake. Barrelhouse 6 Distillery opened for business in 2021.
Mackey is currently finishing her MSc in Brewing and Distilling from Heriot Watt University, in Edinburgh, Scotland. Her expertise so far has contributed to award-winning rye and bourbon whiskeys, moonshine, vodka, and cream liqueurs, and a fine gin with a floral bouquet and only a hint of juniper. A floor-to-ceiling 500-gallon copper still is in a room adjacent to the tasting room; the room is crammed with wooden barrels and sacks of grain including corn, malted barley, wheat and rye. “The idea of Barrelhouse 6 Distillery was born out of a desire to bring together friends, new and old,” Mackey said. “Our goal is to produce the most satisfying and fun experience at the distillery.”
For more information about Barrelhouse 6 Distillery: barrelhouse6.com
Barrelhouse 6 Distillery
9558 Middle Road
Hammondsport, New York 14840