“It was the classic mad scientist image,” he says. “Or dad blowing himself up in the basement. I was covered in pellet dust, head to toe. Steam billowed out of the shop I was working in. I’m not sure what the neighbors thought I was doing.” But the experience turned out to be a catalyst in figuring out exactly how to control steam through the extraction vessel and ultimately through the heat exchanger.

When Meehan met Kiever Hunter, a Boone native who had left the mountains to attend North Carolina-Chapel Hill before returning home, he immediately was impressed by how much Hunter knew about beer. Hunter, the brother of Meehan’s wife-to-be’s best friend, was struck by how passionately Meehan spoke about a process for distilling hops and other plant matter.

“I probably looked at him like he was crazy,” Hunter says.

Meehan knew he needed to find a partner. The day after he invited Hunter to see what he had finished at the time Meehan gave him a company email, and Hunter began cold calling brewers via that address. The two comprise the entire company for now.

At the outset they could process two pounds of hops at a time and 22 in a day. “Then the first big order came in, 176 pounds. We thought, ‘Oh, shit, what are we going to do?” Meehan says. They recently struck a partnership deal with the Hempleton Group, a North Carolina company that has invested in multiple cannabis projects. New River Distilling will soon be able to distill 1,500 pounds of hops per week and to extract iso-alpha acids post distillation. In addition, the equipment will be used to isolate hemp terpenes and extract CBD compounds for hemp farmers around the country.

Greater capacity means they can process larger orders, but also more smaller ones. They also can customize the blend of some odor compounds. “The idea behind what we do is versatility,” Hunter says. Distilling hops that breweries already own became another aspect of versatility, turning what might have been a flaw became a feature. Meehan originally intended to acquire pellets, distill them, and sell the output, but that would have required more investment. By providing hops that will be turned into oil, brewers can balance what they already have under contract.