Know exactly where your alcohol comes from at new Old Town bar

Add one more place to the ever-expanding list of places to drink local – and at this bar, you can watch the alcohol being made.

David Bahre, who has operated Wheat State Distilling for three years, this week opened his own bar in Old Town – connected to the Distillery 244 Old Town event venue next door.

Bahre, who has a master’s degree in agribusiness from Kansas State University, makes all of his liquors – vodka, whiskey, bourbon, rum and gin – from Kansas-grown wheat.

You can watch the distilling process while you sit at the 25-foot-long copper bar, as the still is behind a glass wall at the rear of the bar.

The still – which has a pot and two tall columns – was custom-manufactured in Germany over a period of nine months.

After a bit of a shipping slip-up – it ended up in Dallas instead of New Jersey, where it was expected – the still was brought to Wichita.

“It took about a year to permit the process too, so even after I received it, I had to sit there and look at it for a year before we could actually operate it,” Bahre said.

It even has custom lights installed so you can see the alcohol splashing around inside.

“There’s no reason to buy a still with lights on it – it just looks cool,” Bahre said.

Perhaps the most unique part: While you’re sipping a cocktail, you can find out where in Kansas the wheat used to make the liquor in that cocktail comes from, by county.

Every hand-labeled bottle of liquor comes with unique batch and bottle numbers, which the drinker can then search on Wheat State’s website.

If you’re drinking at the bar, you can ask the bartender for those numbers, Bahre said.

The site will also tell you when it was distilled, when it was bottled, its mash bill, what kind of barrel it was aged in, and more.

“Wheat from one county to the next can be drastically different, so I personally inspect every batch,” Bahre said. “Farmers think it’s cool to grow grains for premium whiskeys – they can brag about that. I tend to get the best of what the state has to offer.”

Wheat State Distilling hopes to capitalize on the surging drink-local movement – offering cocktails made with his Wichita-produced liquor and a rotating selection of beer from local breweries.

“With everything local now being cool, we really hit it at the perfect time,” he said.

This story was originally published December 29, 2016 at 3:58 PM with the headline "Know exactly where your alcohol comes from at new Old Town bar."