David Kyrejko of Brooklyn, New York's new Arcane Distilling pulls the stopper out of a bottle of Lone Wolf Whiskey, a spirit he distilled from an all Galaxy-hopped East Coast double IPA beer made by a local homebrewer. The fragrance of hops is so intense it begins to take over the room. Though novel-sounding in concept, Kyrejko's small-batch "beer whiskey" isn't an entirely new drink. And, in fact, Kyrejko is part of a growing group of producers reducing craft beer into booze.

Believe it or not, the Germans have been distilling beer into the hard stuff for generations, typically in the form of slightly sweet products with names like bierschnaps or bierbrand—takes on schnapps or brandy, respectively, made from beer. Not long ago, G. Schneider & Sohn, producers of the classic and renowned German beer Aventinus, added a distilled version to their portfolio called Edelster Aventinus. Meanwhile, Japan’s famed Kiuchi Brewery has been distilling beer for over a decade, even making a boozed up model of their well-known Hitachino Nest White Ale named Hitachino Kiuchi No Shizuku.

... if you start out with something delicious, you’re going to concentrate delicious ...

Even in the United States, brands like California’s Essential Spirits, who bill their Classick—a bierschnaps distilled from their own California Pale Ale—as "The Original American Bierschnaps," have been distilling beer since 1999. But over the past few years, as the number of craft breweries opening in the U.S. has reached a record pace, and the total number of breweries in the country hit a literal historic high in 2015 (breaking the previous high of 4,131 set in 1873, according to the Brewers Association), interest in distilled beer has begun to gain more momentum.

The godfather of American craft beer distilling is Marko Karakasevic, Master Distiller at California’s Charbay Artisan Distillery & Winery. After experimenting with turning pilsner into whiskey in 1999, six years later he took one of the most highly-regarded IPAs on the market at the time, Bear Republic’s Racer 5 IPA, and processed it into what might have been the first—and is certainly the most famous—whiskey distilled from an American IPA, the Charbay Whiskey R5. At the time, his thought process was simple: "When you distill something, it’s ten to one reduction, so if you start out with something delicious, you’re going to concentrate delicious," Karakasevic quips. "You get the complexities of a delicious beer that you want to drink."

In a basic sense, all whiskey begins life as beer. Whiskey distillers start by fermenting grains (just like beer brewers do) to release sugars that yeast will eventually convert into alcohol. But, the primary difference with whiskey is that this fermented product is never intended to be drank. So, producers never refine the mixture with additional ingredients, like hops. What sets all beer spirits apart is that, before distillation, the beer has been finished in a way that makes it drinkable—identical to the kind of brew you’d find in a six-pack on store shelves.

And there’s a reason most beer rarely becomes a spirit. Working with a finished beer product is what makes beer spirits so unique, but it’s also what makes them more costly, both to produce and, ultimately, to buy. "You get a 6,000 gallon tanker of delicious gold medal-winning IPA. That’s a huge expense," Karakasevic explains. "And then you have to sit on it for like two, three, four, six, 10, 12 years and watch it evaporate away. You’re losing three to four gallons a year, and after 10 years, fuck, there’s 40 gallons gone out of one barrel. So your yield goes down and your cost goes up, and it’s harder to sell a $75 bottle of whiskey because everyone likes to spend $35."

All whiskey begins life as beer.

Despite the cost factor, Charbay still has three products on the market today: a pilsner whiskey ($425), a Big Bear Stout whiskey ($136), and their R5 ($79). That final whiskey has become iconic because it has so much overlap with the American craft beer movement: It’s made from a big name American IPA, has a hop-forward profile, and, as a whiskey, is a spirit in which most beer drinkers dabble.

Though distilling beer into whiskey is the most obvious choice (since both tend to be made from the same grain), some recent distillates have been even more high-concept. This past year, Rhode Island-based spirits producer Sons of Liberty introduced their True Born Gin, The Belgian Wheat Act, a liquor made from a Belgian-style wheat beer. The distillery had originally started making beer whiskey back in 2011, and still sells two varieties. But they began pondering the possibilities of gin because, like whiskey, it's also a spirit that begins its life with fermented grains. However, making beer-gin came with a different set of challenges. "A lot of gins are distilled like vodka," meaning they don’t retain any flavor, explains Bryan Ricard, a Sons of Liberty rep. "So the whole beer thing doesn’t really work." Instead, they choose to make a genever-style gin that is distilled to 90 proof. "That’s how we’re able to retain more of the original flavors," says Ricard. The ingredients which flavor the spirit are actually used twice—when brewing the beer and before distilling the final product. "All the botanicals that are in the gin basket when we distill the product are also in the mash with the beer," he continues, "so it’s not really changing it at all."

What sets all beer spirits apart is that, before distillation, the beer has been finished in a way that makes it drinkable.

Since True Born is a gin, Sons of Liberty also adds juniper berries during the distillation process, so the final product more closely resembles a gin with subtle beer notes than a beer itself. Innovations like these certainly have the sales hook of being made from beer, and can create interesting products, but their potential crossover appeal to beer drinkers galvanized to try new products thanks to the craft beer boom can be more limited. In fact, Ricard admits that some people who drop into the distillery are finding they like the beer more than the gin.

Hence, the future of distilled beer would seem to be in line with Karakasevic's original inspiration for making an IPA whiskey: concentrating the complexities of beer’s delicious flavors. And Kyrejko is on the same page. "My process is not like the other processes," he explains in earnest. "I loved all the delicate components of beer that would be destroyed in a traditional distilling atmosphere." To better capture all those essential beer aromas and flavors into whiskey, Kyrejko built his own vacuum distillation setup that allows him to work at lower temperatures than traditional pot distilling. "The key is heat," he says. "I’m boiling my components at like 30° Celsius [86° Fahrenheit], and by doing that I’m able to minimize or eliminate the degradation of all these flavors, especially things like fermentation flavors like you find in saisons. All those floral, barnyard-y, really delicate flavors that are only made by the yeast."

Indeed, products like Arcane’s Lone Wolf beer whiskeys would seem to be at the forefront of distilled beer’s growth potential, not because they appeal to spirit drinkers, but because they taste so much like beer. "I love beer. I love the flavor of beer. I love the variety in beer. I love the creativity in beer," confesses Kyrejko. "I want my whiskey to taste like you just opened six beers and smashed them into one and drank that ... I want my whiskey to taste like beer." The logic makes sense. Though the craft distilling movement has had its own boom as of late, when it comes specifically to beer-distilled spirits, craft beer drinkers seem to be the ones driving the growing interest. Oddly enough, the future of beer spirits might just be spirits that taste more like beer than ever before.

Editor: Kat Odell