Mobb Mountain distillery to launch in Fort Collins in spring

FORT COLLINS – Three 25-year-old business neophytes are working to open a distillery in Old Town Fort Collins this spring.

Mobb Mountain Distillers has secured 1,000 square feet at 400 Linden St., space its owners plan to divide between a production area and a tasting room. Co-owner Noah Kroencke said the customer area would have three tables and four or five seats at a bar, plus three more tables on an outside patio. The location is next to longtime Mexican restaurant El Burrito.

According to its website, Mobb Mountain intends “on keeping with the latest in sustainable practices and also maintaining complete transparency in our production process.  We are proudly a grain-to-glass distillery. Our products are 100 percent Colorado milled, brewed, distilled and bottled.”

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Those products will include a single-malt whiskey – “as simple as the whiskey forefathers would have liked it,” Kroencke said – along with an American rye dry gin and a “100-proof Rocky Mountain rye white whiskey” that Kroencke described as “stronger than most – a kick in the pants.”

They chose the initial product line, Kroencke said, because “everybody’s doing bourbon, especially here, and I’m a scotch drinker.”

Neither Kroencke, who moved to Fort Collins three years ago from Madison, Wis., nor his partners Pat Moriearty of Sheboygan, Wis., and Dave Grant, a New Jersey native, have run a business before, but Kroencke said Grant has become accomplished at building stills and “I’m a pretty good reader. I learn things pretty fast. So we just thought, why don’t we give this a go.”

The name comes simply from the “mob” of friends who would hang out together in Wisconsin, and the owners’ hope of appealing to a population that “loves the outdoors, getting into the mountains, having adventures,” Kroencke said.

But he stressed that the budding entrepreneurs aren’t just having fun. “We love living here,” he said. “We’re not just making a business out of a hobby.”

The young men of Mobb Mountain are wending their way through the final stages of the federal permitting process and then will tackle compliance with state, county and city business and health regulations. They’ll also soon learn about the pressures of competition, because Blue Ocean Enterprises has proposed opening Old Elk Distillery, a 100,000-square-foot distillery, restaurant, tasting room, retail and meeting space, nearby.

Kroencke’s vision isn’t quite as grand – at least initially.

“Our beginnings are as humble as our goals are simple,” the trio wrote on the Mobb Mountain website. “Our passion for whiskey runs deep and our love for Fort Collins and its community is why we began this endeavor.  We are in the early stages of this journey and eagerly looking forward to the challenges and excitement that the future holds. We can’t wait to share our drink with you all. Stay tuned for more updates!”