DENTED BRICK®
A Salt Lake City Distillery

Our story

A few years back a small group of entrepreneurs from Utah gathered to start the weekend with a craft cocktail hour.  As usual, we discussed what we thought made the ideal drink and how it might taste.  After repeating this ritual over the years, we finally had the guts to bring to life our passion for the highest quality spirits and recipes from centuries-old pioneers.

It was important that we build a world-class distillery in Salt Lake City with the integrity that mirrors our lifestyle. So we agreed, just as we live purposefully and joyfully among the Wasatch mountains of Utah, so will we distill the liquid treasure and gift that comes from our local artesian well.  Combined with regionally sourced grains and house select yeasts, Dented Brick® now offers small batch spirits made for the most discerning palates.



I invite you to experience the well-balanced flavors of original recipes and the stories from which they were born.

To your good health and a well-lived life,



Salt Lake City Utah Distillery

The Most Important Ingredient

When we set out to find the ideal land on which to build our distillery, we were armed with one critical piece of advice from an old moonshiner I had met in my travels and education in Kentucky. “It starts with the water!” this old moonshiner proclaimed, when giving his advice on the most important ingredient essential in making great liquor!  So it would be!

The search would end with a gift from heaven (and mother nature) — a property with an artesian water well!  The well would mark the spot where we would build our world class distillery.  What’s more, the land was once the farm of Utah’s very first distiller of record, Hugh Moon.  Hugh produced whiskey in Salt Lake City for early Mormon pioneers in the 1850’s.

The snow melt water of Utah’s Wasatch mountains flows gently through the earth to our artesian water well, shedding impurities and attracting the minerals that make the pure and enriched taste of our brands possible. This year’s snow is next year’s whiskey!

The brick house
What's in the name?

Dented Brick Distillery® is named in honor of the well driller that was responsible for the amazing artesian well that is located at the distillery — the source of water for our spirits. The well driller was killed in a blazing gunfight that left impressions in the bricks of his house. To honor the well driller, some of those "dented bricks" were incorporated into the new distillery building and gave it its name.

Salt Lake City Utah Distillery
AUTHENTIC AND TRUE HISTORY
Utah's distillery history of Hugh Moon
Once we discovered the existence of the pioneer and distiller Hugh Moon, we did a deep dive into Utah’s rich distilling history. Turns out, Utah’s distilling history goes back as far as Kentucky’s, and has iconic figures to rival even Jack Daniels.  

Hugh and his entire family were the first converts to Mormonism from overseas. In May 1840, the family departed Liverpool and sailed for the New York harbor, with plans to travel overland to Nauvoo. It took nearly a year to travel from NY to IL. The family finally arrived on April 16, 1841.

It is not clear that Hugh was distilling in Nauvoo, but in 1857 there is reference in Henry Moon’s diary that Hugh lost $100 worth of mash in a rainstorm.
In addition to Hugh Moon, there were distillers L.W. Hardy, who shared the Salt Lake Tribune advertising campaign, and in 1861, George Baddley, a Salt Lake distiller in the 10th Ward.

Finally, in another of a long string of coincidental findings that point to the fact Dented Brick® was meant to be, we found that Hugh Moon actually owned the property where Dented Brick® is now located!

It was a large farm Hugh purchased in 1856. He grew sugar cane, and likely rye and other fermentable ingredients, and had pigs to which he fed his spent grain.
There are other interesting figures that we are discovering as we read the Moon Family diaries, and references to other historic documents. We look forward to re-releasing these historic labels and whiskeys in 2020, and hope you’ll join us in this project! Take a tour, buy a bottle, buy a barrel, or become an owner in Dented Brick® and our historic whiskey project!