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About Us
AZ Born, CO Crafted, Sustainability Focused
When you grow up in the desert, you have a different approach when it comes to water usage, a sustainability mindset permeates into everything
Our Story
Both born in the Phoenix Area, Eric and Austin made the choice in their venture into adulthood by setting up their lives in a new climate. They took their desert instilled water-preservation mindset and applied it to building out their distillery to reduce water usage when creating quality consumables. Ultimately opening the doors to Ballmer Peak Distillery in late 2019, serving up high-end cocktails at accessible pricing made entirely from spirits made onsite. It wasn’t the most ideal time to launch a new business, but they say hindsight is 2020.
During the pandemic Ballmer Peak Distillery was one of the first to switch operations to hand sanitizer, and prioritized the conversion of unwanted alcohol into sanitizer, which they provided to individuals within the community at no cost. It was a strange time to say the least, but worked as a testbed to craft new products into their core lineup. In 2020, Vodka crafted from molasses joined their Australian-inspired Gin, Silver Rum, Golden Rum, Spiced Rum and unaged Light Whiskey.
In the years which followed Ballmer Peak continued to innovate and iterate, releasing small batches of experimental, limited release products in an effort to foster creativity and ultimately flesh out their barrel program. This led to a collaboration with Locke & Co distilling, utilizing their rye-whiskey-soaked charred aspen discs into Ballmer Peak’s Outback Aspen Gin. The current barrel program contains a selection of rums, brandies and whiskies stored in a variety of different oak casks, expected to release once they reach maturation.
Now you can grab a cocktail at the cozy Green Mountain tasting room, open 7-days a week, or just swing by to grab a bottle to take home and enjoy. Be sure to check out the events calendar to keep informed on our fun activities, food truck schedule and upcoming bottle releases!
Meet The Team
Head Distiller
Austin Adamson
Austin Adamson has travelled the world sampling spirits and learning about what makes each region different, specifically traveling to areas within The United States, Japan, Taiwan, Holland, Austria, Czech Republic, Italy and South Korea to learn what makes a regional spirit successful and delicious. He spent 18 months sampling the budding craft distillery scene of south east Australia, after the county's continued, strong showing at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition. In 2019 Austin was selected to be on a special episode of Discovery Channel's Moonshiners, for their first episode of what would become its own show, Master Distiller.
Austin got his start distilling professionally as an assistant for Denver’s first distillery pub: Denver Distillery. It wasn’t long before Austin took over as head distiller and ultimately trained his replacement before starting full time at Ballmer Peak. Austin can still be seen occasionally in Baker’s Imperial Building which houses Denver Distillery, milling grains and volunteering to sample new product releases.
When Austin isn’t crafting spirits in the production room, or sampling them elsewhere he can be found playing with his foxhound Hazel, enjoying time with his partner Stacey, playing the latest video games or, more reaslistily, working on one of his many other projects: I Speak Giant, GenerOZity, MonsterVine to name a few.
Operations Manager
Eric Strom
Eric Strom has a mind for problem solving and an eye for design. Not long after graduating university with a degree in Intermedia at ASU he moved to Denver for a change of scenery and a career in web programming and design. He quickly realized that he didn’t want to work in programming forever, and wanted to be his own boss. The path to Ballmer Peak was built on the creative ideas Eric leveraged in smaller, incomplete projects that were always fueled by whiskey. It wasn’t until the spirits inspired realization of how rewarding and satisfying working in the alcohol industry could be, combined with the realization of the craft beer market saturation, paired with the uprising of craft spirits sparked the eureka of Ballmer Peak Distillery. From the initial idea Eric poured over all materials and content he could get his hands on. He ultimately overcame every roadblock, and often attributes Ballmer Peak’s early successes to being forced to take the slower approach.
On the rare occasions Eric spends not working to better Ballmer Peak Distillery he spends his time arguing with his Basset-beagle, Fasha, falling down a rabbit-hole of bizarre youtube videos (yachts, ghosts, other), engaging in “harmless” conspiracy theories like how the titanic didn’t actually sink, discussing his nuanced definition & classification of what constitutes a sandwich, but probably more often than not you can find him eating something delicious and figuring out how to recreate that experience at home.
