Customer Spotlight · Sparta, Kentucky
Brewzle Visits Neeley Family Distillery
Eleven generations, three chambers, one barrel at a time.
Brewzle host TJ Gamble traveled to Sparta, Kentucky, to meet Royce Neeley and his father, Roy, and to fire up what the show calls one of only three three-chamber pot stills left in the United States. Neeley Family Distillery is a Vendome customer, and this is one of the best looks yet at how their whiskey is made.
Watch the episode The three-chamber still · 18:38The full episode
Watch Brewzle at Neeley Family Distillery
Forty-three minutes with Royce and Roy Neeley: the family history, the yeast they harvest themselves, the rickhouses the family built, and the three-chamber still running from fresh beer to whiskey.
They Are Literally Killing People Over This Whiskey · Brewzle · September 2026
Video and photographs from Brewzle’s episode, shared with credit to Brewzle.
Chapter 8 · 18:38
Three Chambers, Distilled Three Times in Line
A three-chamber still splits its pot into three stacked chambers with a preheater on top. Each run, the bottom chamber is emptied, everything drops down one level, and fresh beer from the preheater fills the top. By the time a charge reaches the bottom it has been distilled three times in line, so Royce is distilling the mash itself, not just the low wines. That is where the heavier, oilier spirit comes from.
Because the vapor has to fight its way through every chamber, the still builds four to five pounds of pressure. Royce puts a standard pot still at about 205 degrees and a column at about 190. This one runs at 240, and that extra time, temperature and pressure pulls everything out of the grain. The pressure is also why the copper has to be so much heavier, and with that much copper turning out so little whiskey, stills like this fell out of fashion.
“This has enough copper in it to build a column still that would make 100 barrels a day. We will make one barrel today.”
Royce Neeley, Neeley Family DistilleryThe Neeleys set theirs up to run from the floor, with air-operated valves on every chamber instead of a ladder climb for each one, and a preheater that has the next charge of beer hot before the current run finishes. A thumper after chamber one redistills the vapor one more time on its way out. You can watch it run from 18:38.
That is why I didn’t make some gigantic chamber still… It’s for that high-end guy that loves that viscosity, that oil.
Royce Neeley
On why the three-chamber still is built for a smaller, more particular market. Hear it at 30:49
Eleven generations
A Family That Does It Their Own Way
Royce says the family has been making whiskey, mostly illegally, for eleven generations, and the Neeleys have always triple pot distilled. His grandfather could not read or write, but he knew how to triple pot distill, passed down from father to son. In 2015, Royce and his father, Roy, set out to take that history legal.
The yeast still comes from the mountains. The family catches it on the farm they have had since the 1840s, and Royce told Brewzle he does not know of any other commercial distillery that wild-harvests its yeast. Roy, who ran a construction company, built the distillery and its rickhouses himself, so the family distills in a building the family built.
“If we get investors or we get a bank involved or somebody else, they’re going to own us. And I want to own it.”
Royce Neeley, on starting the distilleryThat is where Brewzle closes the episode: a small distillery with the restraint not to grow beyond what is working, making exactly the whiskey it sets out to make. Hear TJ’s closing at 41:41.
Built the Old Way, on Purpose
Vendome has built copper stills in Louisville since 1903. Watching a customer run a still as unusual as this one is a reminder of why heavy copper and careful fabrication still matter. If you are planning a still of your own, traditional or one of a kind, the Vendome team would like to hear about it.
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