Local resident turns whiskey passion into business opportunity

By Rich Place

For Dean Hyder, a longtime passion for whiskey has led to the establishment of Newstead’s first legal distillery and he will soon be sharing that passion with those who wish to stop by and have a taste.

Hyder is putting the finishing touches on Old Scotland Road Distillery, located at 7010 Scotland Rd. just north of the Bloomingdale Avenue intersection, and hopes to be open to the public within the next couple weeks.

The opening is expected to take place about a year since Hyder broke ground for the distillery building on Aug. 3, 2019. Since that time, the space has been transformed into a fully operational distillery, complete with the necessary equipment to produce whiskey and a tasting room for visitors to sample it.

Under the Old Scotland Road Distillery name, Hyder will be producing Handlebar Whiskey — those familiar with Hyder’s trademark handlebar mustache can already make sense of the unique name.

“I don’t plan to be huge,” said Hyder during a recent tour of the facility. “I don’t want to expand and become the next Jack Daniels — that’s not my goal. My goal is to stay small, craft, handmade and make some money, have fun at it and enjoy meeting people and making people happy in the long run.”

Hyder said that bourbon has always been his drink of choice, and his spark of learning more about it came from someone he worked with, who was also a part-time tour guide at Buffalo Trace Distillery in Kentucky.

It eventually led Hyder and his wife, Deb, to head south and visit several distilleries on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail.

“That was really cool,” Hyder said. “I got really hyped up about it, seeing how everything was done.”

One thing led to another and suddenly Hyder’s passion for the drink transformed into an idea to make some himself. That idea blossomed from making some as simply a “bucket list item” to making it for public consumption. Hyder and his wife ended up going to an all-day school on distilling, where he received plenty of reference materials, classroom instruction and hands-on training.

He met with a handful of others from a distillery in Kentucky, who gave him a tour of their facility. That’s when the idea for Hyder went from a potential hobby on the side to launching a business.

“I’m looking around at all their stuff and I’m thinking, ‘I think I can do this,’” Hyder said. “So then it really started to take hold. It was something that we started thinking that if something ever happened with my job or whatever, maybe we’d just dive into this.”

And then, in March 2019, Hyder lost his full-time job.

“When I got let go, it’s like ‘well, here we go,’” he said. “And we decided to do this. We started to really plan and get into it.”

Hyder said he and his wife devoted much of their life savings to starting the business and spent the middle of last year developing plans and envisioning what they wanted the business to look like. In August, they broke ground and spent the last year erecting the building, purchasing and installing equipment, and obtaining the necessary permits and licenses on both the state and federal levels.

Hyder said he has tried to keep the process as ultra-local as possible, including purchasing grain from New York Craft Malt in Batavia, working with Culligan with his supply of water and having his labels made by Niagara Label.

He has his whiskey making process memorized to the tenths of a degree, as is required in such a process to produce the highest quality product. During a recent tour, he kept busy as he discussed the process while also keeping an eye on his instruments.

“I say this is handcrafted whiskey and this is handcrafted because I put in a lot of hands on (work),” he said while stirring a large tub full of mash, a mix of grain and water that is the first step in the whiskey making process.

Those interested in learning more about whiskey making can chat with Hyder, whose passion is clear when explaining the process, once Old Scotland Road Distillery opens. He said he plans to have whiskey for sale in early August and intends to open the tasting room as restrictions related to the recent Coronavirus pandemic allow. Hyder’s wife, Deb, is expected to be behind the counter in the tasting room once that’s up and running, and she said she’s looking forward to meeting those who stop by.

The first two products Hyder plans to produce are a white corn and a white rye whiskey and he plans to begin making bourbon when his barrels arrive.

“We’re hoping to get on the (whiskey) trails that go around,” Hyder said, noting he’s also helping to spread the word by “word of mouth more than anything else if we are going to sell the product. If we do a good job and people like it, they will tell other people.”

Old Scotland Road Distillery has been active on both its Facebook and Instagram accounts to keep the public updated on the opening process, and Hyder said those sites are the best ways to keep updated about the distillery’s upcoming opening. A website is also coming soon, he said.

For more information, visit facebook.com/OldScotlandRoadDistillery or on Instagram @old_scotland_rd_distillery.