Autumn is traditionally reserved for a visit to the London Craft Distilling Expo, which is a big European conference on all things related to the art and business of craft distilling. London did not disappoint this year either, with many exhibitors and two days of very useful lectures in three different halls. It is physically impossible to see everything that is of interest so our advice to any new attendees is to prepare themselves by making a detailed plan of classes and workshops that they wish to attend before coming to the Expo.

From personal experience, we strongly recommend going to conferences like this, especially the London Craft Distilling Expo, because not only will you do some excellent networking, but also make new lifelong friendships.

The DES team from Subotica is the proof attendees can communicate in other languages, not just English. Hi Momir and thanks for the great conversation about plum brandy.
Bill Owens and David T. Smith with the Kapela plum eau-de-vie or Šljivovica as we call it..
David T. Smith had a really good workshop on Old Tom gin style.
A very instructive lecture on vacuum distillation was another highlight of the Expo.
We also used our visit to London for another tour of our future still. This is the iStill 500 model from the Dutch manufacturer iStill. At the moment iStill and we are discussing certain modifications to this model so that it better suits our needs.

The final panel was excellent as ever, with many interesting questions. It started with the overview of the craft distilling industry at the moment and then continued from there. We mostly focused on barrels and barrel-aging. Also, for the first time, fruit brandies were discussed and it was gratifying to see that they were finally getting the attention and recognition they so richly deserved.

See you in London next year!

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