A Visit to Bully Boy Distillery

Earlier this year, I was treated to a weekend in Boston with my son, Collin, who you may remember from my post on the Seattle Chapter of the Whiskey Mafia. We had a little time to kill on our final afternoon in the city, so we used the opportunity to visit the Bully Boy Distillery in Roxbury.  

We were thankful for our navigation!  The distillery is located in a nondescript building in a busy neighborhood with commercial, light industrial and residential development.  Parking is on-street, but we didn't have any trouble finding a spot nearby on a Sunday afternoon.

Inside, the distillery has a tasting room with a full bar so you can enjoy cocktails in addition to their selection of 13 craft spirits including an American Straight Whiskey.  There is also a function room which is normally where the tasting component of the tour takes place, but the room was in use for our visit, so we did our tasting on folding chairs on the distillery floor.  Distillery tours are $10, and include some entertaining history as well as insight into Bully Boy's process.

The Bully Boy Story

A display on the distillery floor shows (L ro R): The
Bully Boy plaque, some of the bottles found in the 
vault, and an old photo that includes Bully Boy 
and the Willis's grandfather.

Like many craft distilleries, Bully Boy is a family affair. It was founded by Dave and Will Willis, who began their spirits career making hard cider and later brandy on Charlescote Farm, a fourth generation family farm. Also on the farm is "the vault," a room in the farm's fieldstone basement behind a steel door from a defunct bank that was probably a prohibition era speakeasy.  The vault contains a collection of spirits amassed by Willis's grandfather including pre-prohibition and prohibition era  whiskies, vodka, rum and other spirits. This collection was the inspiration for what eventually became the Bully Boy Distillery.

The Distillery's namesake was a quarter horse that once lived on the farm. "Bully Boy" belonged to the Willis's grandfather, who was a friend of Theodore Roosevelt's at Harvard and got his name from TR's well-known exclamation, "Bully!"  There was a plaque in the vault honoring Bully Boy and connecting the horse to spirits, a connection that continues with the distillery's name.   

The Bully Boy Process

As befits a craft distillery founded on a farm, the Willis brothers use local grains and botanicals in their distilled spirits so their whiskies reflect the natural environment of Massachusetts. Some of their corn even comes from the family farm itself.  As to their rum, while sugar cane doesn't grow in the cold New England climate and most of their molasses is sourced from New Orleans, Boston has long been associated with the import of molasses and other sugar cane products, and was the site of the famous "Great Molasses Flood" in 1919. 

The experimentation still and the library.

Dave Willis serves as the Head Distiller at Bully Boy and he crafts 13 different spirits, most using the distillery's 750 gallon Christian Carl hybrid still, pictured above. Gin is distilled using a 150 gallon Kothe Still. Dave also has a micro still on the distillery floor that he uses to do quick experiments with new spirits, which he keeps in a gigantic library (complete with a library ladder) on one wall of the distillery.  

Some bottling and packing is done in the
distillery, behind the stills.

Much of the bottling, packing and shipping of Bully Boy's spirits is done in the back of the distillery and is an all-hands-on-deck affair. On occasion, even Dave and Will's parents get involved in the bottling process. Our guide said that when they do, they get to pick the music that the team listens to!

Bully Boy American Straight Whiskey Tasting Notes

The distillery's website indicates that their goal in creating their American Straight Whiskey was to achieve a balance between the sweetness of corn and the dry spiciness of rye, leading to a mash bill of 45% corn, 45% rye, 10% malted barley. The bottled whiskey is proofed to 84.

Nose: Spearmint, vanilla, grain.

Palate: Black pepper, honey, mint, baking spice.

Finish:  Pepper, bread, honey.

It's hard to say if the distillery achieved its goal of balance. To me, this tasted like a rye whiskey. Although I'll grant you that it was a bit sweeter than most ryes, I have enjoyed ryes with similar flavor profiles in the past.  On the other hand, it's pretty clear that this is NOT a bourbon.  Balanced or not, its enjoyable and worth checking out.

Of course, we also tried several of their other spirits during the tour.  While I certainly enjoyed them, I didn't catch notes (this is a whiskey blog after all), so I'm afraid you'll have to experience those for yourself.

Unfortunately, Collin had a flight to catch and we were a little rushed at the end of the tour so I can't give you a review of the cocktails served in the bar. I can tell you it was packed house on a Sunday afternoon, so they must have been pretty good.  

If you find yourself in Boston sometime with 45 minutes to an hour to spare for a tour, I would say the tour is well worth your time and the $10 price of admission. I'd go back just to take a closer look at the library and hear some of the fascinating family history again.  

If you've been to Bully Boy or tried their spirits and have an thoughts of your own to share, we'd love to hear them in the comments below!

Cheers!

- Trevor