The new Montanya distillery chiller provides eco-friendly temperature control during the distillation process with a closed-loop system. Our new chiller, which launched with our new distillery in September 2022, now saves 250,000 gallons of water per year. 

So what’s a distillery chiller? A distillery chiller is a system that maintains water at a cool temperature and is used to turn vapors into liquid. This cooled liquid is the precious rum we collect in barrels. With our new distillery chiller, the water comes from a closed-loop system that recycles the water, rather than discarding it after every use. 

Another eco-friendly feature of our new chiller is the use of the environment to our advantage. There are two parts to a distillery chiller system: The evaporator and the condenser. The evaporator is located inside our distillery, and the condenser, which is the cooling part of the system, is located outside our distillery. Because our mountain town climate is generally cool to cold year-round, it uses significantly less energy than coolers located in warmer climates. (Yet another reason why distilling rum in the mountains just makes sense!)

While many chillers use glycol, our chiller only uses water. This is another significant environmental improvement as glycol is a top contributor to global warming. We are so excited for this new system and strive to make our distillery greener and more environmentally friendly with each improvement we make.