Doghouse Distillery’s Debt Collector: a story of English “Bourbon”

Debt Collector Whisky from Doghouse Distillery has just landed at Master of Malt. And since we’ve just been down to Battersea to see the place for ourselves, it seemed only fair to share the story – from grain to bottle, vodka to whisky, and everything in between.

We met co-founders Braden and Katherine Saunders, asked all the nerdy questions, and got a proper look behind the curtain.

“Everything is vodka”

What the hell is a “grain-to-bottle” distillery anyway? Doghouse puts it simply: buy malted grain, mash it, ferment it, distil it. That means creating your base alcohol – vodka.

Baller Vodka is made from 100% English wheat and, notably, it’s the only vodka distilled from scratch in London. Braden Saunders says vodka isn’t sexy, but he’s adamant it’s everything: the foundation of spirits, endlessly versatile, and always in demand. It’s the first thing I tasted, and it sets the tone early – this is a varied spirits distillery, not just an English whisky outfit.

Hence Renegade Gin, Doppelgänger Aperitivo, and the world-first Chilli Bacon Vodka. “Do you like spice? This is hot,” Saunders warns as he pours me a drop.“We extract the fruit – that beautiful, chocolatey, fruity, flashy habanero.” And it’s vegan. Despite the name, the bacon element is more ‘bacon crisp’ than rashers. They use a meaty vegetable, maple smoke it, macerate it in vodka, then combine it with the habanero infusion. Two vodkas, brought together.

A can of Big Tom Spiced Tomato Mix gets poured on top. “That is the best Bloody Mary on the planet,” Saunders says. The inspiration? A hungover morning in the U.S., “I was having a Bloody Mary with a streak of bacon in it. I started chomping the bacon and thought, fuck, that’s insane – it’s changing my life forever. Fast forward 10 years. There’s flavoured vodkas out – fuck all that shit, that’s been done. But what about a Bloody base! And the first thing? Bacon. We gotta get bacon in here.”

English moonshine

We move on to the whisky portion of the tasting, with three samples placed on the table. The first is clear. New make. White dog. Moonshine. Call it what you like, but it’s raw, unaged spirit. Vegetal, vibrant, and full of life. “It’s a bit like pisco, grappa, maybe even agricole rhum,” says Saunders. “It’s super interesting – and you can’t get it anymore.” Big US names like Buffalo Trace and Woodford used to bottle theirs, but these days it’s seen as a smarter investment to age it all.

Doghouse, naturally, decided to put it on the shelf. “When I started selling this, people thought I was crazy,” Saunders admits. Retail hasn’t been easy – no one’s ordering Moonshine and Soda down the local – but bartenders have embraced it. 

It’s great in a Daiquiri, adds kick to a Negroni, and once people actually taste it, perceptions start to shift. “One of our biggest obstacles is the label. It’s edgy and grungy – just like us. But that’s the point. It’s our personality. And if people don’t like that, they’re not our kind of people.”

English “bourbon”

From that punchy moonshine comes London’s first bourbon-style whisky: Debt Collector. It’s the only grain-to-bottle, bourbon-style whisky made in the capital and available in the UK. The production sticks closely to traditional bourbon methods, with two key twists: it’s made in Battersea, not Kentucky, and the mash is lautered – meaning it’s fermented off the grain – while still using a sour mash process.

Most importantly, no using the B-word. Bourbon has to come from the US. But the ethos is there, and it helps to make Doghouse stand out from the crowd. Saunders grew up loving Scotch, Irish, and bourbon. But with everyone else making single malt, he asked: how do we stand out? The answer is to do something nobody else is doing. “The Scots do it brilliantly. The Irish too. Everyone in England’s making single malt”.

Doghouse took the renegade route. If everyone’s zigging, they zag. “We like pushing the rules, creating new categories – we have to, we’re young, and we’ve got to stand out.” But make no mistake – this isn’t rebellion for rebellion’s sake. Saunders saw a drinks landscape full of smoke and mirrors – brands slapping ‘London Gin’ on the label while quietly buying in neutral spirit. “They’re all liars,” he says. “We’re purists at heart. These traditions go back hundreds of years for a reason. A 200L barrel? Perfect size. We study what came before, then tweak it just enough to make it ours.”

How Dogouse Distillery makes spirits

Milling & Mashing

Braden gives me the full tour so I can see where those tweaks are made. The process begins with grain. And grain is everything, Saunders says. Doghouse buys as locally as it can, from Crisp Maltings in Norfolk, a co-operative of 225 East Anglian farms. Mash bills vary – 75% corn, 8% rye, 17% barley for whisky, and 100% wheat for vodka.

There’s no grain silo. Every bag is hauled up a five-metre ladder and dumped by hand. It’s hard graft. Milling happens on-site using a three-roll mill, breaking grain into husk, grits, and flour. A pre-mixer wets the grain as it drops, like making industrial pancakes.

Doghouse essentially has a microbrewery at its distillery, with a Croatian-built 2,000-litre system at its core, steam-jacketed and fully tri-clamp for versatility. It was originally made for beer, but it works brilliantly here. The system includes a lauter tun with a false bottom and multiple suction points to extract the sweet wort while keeping the grain back.  When brewing 100% wheat, the mash goes in at 85°C. For whisky, it’s more like 78–80°C. Wheat and corn are particularly gelatinous, so keeping temperatures up avoids a gloopy disaster.

A kettle tun, or brew kettle, serves as a staging area for double mashes, while a whirlpool tank (used to keep the hops out before you ferment beer) is largely unused. “Having two tanks is really helpful. It transfers slowly going through a heat exchanger, but you can just bash into the kettle and get the next mash on, that’s handy,” Saunders says. 

You can open a compartment to access spent grain. “We used to give it to farmers, but because of our food safety requirements, now we have to organically dispose of it. We’re SALSA approved. To get into retail, you jump through all the hoops and show that you can. So now ReFood do it”.

Sour Mashing

Just like in Kentucky, Doghouse uses the sour mash method. After the initial distillation, you’re left with pot ale: a mix of spent wash, roasted malt, water, yeast, and nutrients. Strip it right down to around 1% alcohol, after squeezing out every last drop of usable spirit, you can recover roughly 300 litres per run.

Then, instead of tossing it, feed a portion of that sour, low-acidity liquid back into the next mash. Typically, Doghouse reuses around 15%–20% of its water volume as sour mash. It’s efficient and it adds consistent flavour and delivers a natural nutrient boost for the next round of yeast. It also cuts down on freshwater use, which is no small thing in an urban distillery.

Fermentation

Fermentation takes place in three custom-built 3,800-litre fermenters. Each ferment is temperature-controlled via a chilled, closed-loop water system. The brew is fermented for three days. Doghouse extracts about 1,500 litres of wort per brew, so two brews of wort go in each tank, with 800 litres of headspace. Overnight, it gets to 9% ABV.

Vodka gets a specific yeast strain designed for high temperatures and clean results. It ferments at 30°C. Whisky ferments at 26–28°C with Kentucky bourbon yeast. Like brewing, Doghouse adds some salts back into its brews just to have a consistent water profile, as well as some yeast nutrients. “So when we pitch yeast, we’ll also put some nutrients, zinc and a few other things, it’s just about trying to keep it as consistent as we can by giving it a little bit of help”.

Crucially, Doghouse ferments off-grain. That means the spent grain is removed before fermentation, unlike many American distilleries that ferment everything together (“on-grain”) using pulverised grain flour. Off-grain may be more fiddly, but it gives a cleaner, brighter wash, better for their young, characterful whisky.

Distillation 

Distillation at Doghouse isn’t just about making alcohol – it’s about making everything, under one roof. Vodka, whisky, gin, aperitivos, even absinthe.

When co-founder Braden Saunders told an ethanol engineer what he wanted, the response was blunt: “Mate, you need four distilleries, you twat.” So instead, they built what he calls a “Toyota” still – one that does everything well, even if it’s not a single-purpose Ferrari.

The still itself is a hybrid pot-column setup designed by a multi-generation outfit in Tuscany, the same one that made Bombay Sapphire’s system. Guidance from German stillmaker Christian Carl helped maximise reflux and tweak condenser performance. It’s an incredibly versatile bit of kit, hooked up to a semi-automated, sensor-loaded control system powered by Schneider Electric. Every detail of every run is recorded so the team can track exactly what went right (or wrong) over months or years.

Making vodka, whisky, gin, and more

The first distillation turns an 8–10% ABV wash into low wines. The system can crank those low wines as high as 75% ABV – astronomically bigger than the 24% ABV typical of traditional pot stills. Energy efficiency, more yield, and a cleaner spirit, it’s all part of the versatility the system was designed to bring. From there, the spirit can go one of two ways. For whisky, it goes back through the pot still for a second run. For vodka, it’s run through Doghouse’s bespoke 21-metre vodka column – the only one of its kind in London – and refined to 96.5% ABV. The gin and aperitivos etc., are created from that vodka base.

That column has 44 plates across three separate sections (16, 14, 14) and includes a second set of seven plates plus a deflegmator at the top – essentially a high-precision reflux condenser. It’s a serious bit of engineering, built to pull only the heart of the run – the purest, cleanest fraction – and leave the heads and tails behind. Unlike many vodka producers, there’s no need to carbon filter. The result is a spirit that’s still got mouthfeel, structure, and just a whisper of fermentation character.

It also brings flexibility in whisky production. In Scotland, regulations are tight, and the stills are engineered to produce a consistent, yet individual character. The slant of the lyne arm, the shape of the body… You can trace the effect these have on the spirit. But Doghouse built theirs to be tuned. 

A system of flexibility and variance 

“We can dial in exactly how much reflux we want,” says Braden. “It’s like adjusting the angle of your lyne arm on the fly.” The deflegmator at the top of the still acts like a throttle: full blast for clean and pure, minimal for heavy and funky. They can send vapour back into the pot or forward into the column, depending on the spirit style they’re after.

Purists might grumble that such flexibility removes some of the romance. But the idea comes straight from bourbon production. In the US, big distilleries run continuous beer stills that constantly convert mash into low wines, which then pass through a doubler – a secondary pot still – to refine the spirit. Doghouse doesn’t have a continuous setup; it’s all batch. But they’ve engineered a hybrid that mimics the flexibility and output of that kind of system, while still preserving the hands-on craft of pot distillation.

In short, it’s not traditional Scotch. And it’s not exactly American, either. It’s a clever, London-born hybrid of the two – built to deliver consistency, control, and character across multiple spirit styles. It’s also the reason they can make whisky and vodka from scratch in the same building. 

Maturation 

Doghouse matures whisky in 50–200 litre new charred American oak barrels from Kentucky, sourced via Speyside Cooperage. Interestingly, Saunders and co. found laying barrels on their side improves maturation – even if it’s a pain to rack (two vs nine per pallet). The smaller barrels accelerate extraction, so in just nine months, they get rich colour and toffeeed flavour. There’s no staves, no chips, no additives, or shortcuts. 

It’s also currently all fresh American oak. The aim isn’t to mimic sherry bombs or play with fancy finishes for the sake of it. “I figured if I was going to get a reputation for being good at this job, I would not need to overcomplicate the barrel,” Saunders explains. “That’s not to say the sherry barrels aren’t cool, but I just thought I really needed to show the industry I can do this”. 

Even the Saunders were surprised at the initial results, however. Tasting their one-year-old spirit prompted them to bottle it too. “We started asking – why wait three years?” There’s a two-year-old distillery exclusive release, and a one-year-aged Debt Collector. It’s punchy, spiced, and not exactly mellow, but that’s the point.

Who they are

Doghouse is the Saunders. Braden and Katherine spent years running pubs and working behind bars, both in London and Australia. While the pair were running a successful craft beer pub in Australia, they toyed with launching a brewery. 

But by 2015, the Aussie beer scene was saturated, and the idea evolved. They’re obsession with process, with pumps, valves, and water flying everywhere, became the new driver. “We loved retail – we still do, we’re about to open our own bar, Cellar Door – but what really captivated us was the energy of the people actually making the stuff,” Braden says.

They landed back in London in 2016, found an empty unit in Battersea, and spent months experimenting on a tiny pot still. Now, it’s a fully-fledged distillery doing everything the hard way. No outsourcing. No white labels. “We figured, if you can make beer, then to make spirits you just evaporate beer, right? How hard could it be?” 

The answer, as Braden discovered, was fucking hard. A trip to Kentucky helped – “everyone there was lovely, no secrets, just good luck” – but the learning curve was steep. “The hardest part isn’t fermentation temperatures. It’s selling the piss.”

What they believe

But they made it work. And did so while taking sustainability seriously, not in a ‘print the labels on recycled paper and call it a day’ sort of way. It harvests rainwater from the distillery roof to top up their process and cooling systems, and the cooling system itself is a closed-loop setup. Heat comes from a steam generator, the supply chain is as local as possible,  packaging is heading towards plastic-free by the end of 2025, and it’s all done without outsourcing half the operation. 

It’s not flash – just proper, thoughtful, and refreshingly honest. Saunders says the real story lies in farming, in British agriculture, in industries that once exported to the world but are now fighting to stay alive. It’s about keeping things local, from the fields to the glass. 

He puts it simply: “If you want the price of a pint to stay low, you’ve got to buy British.” That chef they used to work with in the pub who insisted on doing everything from scratch and sourcing locally? Turns out he had a point. Supporting community, economy, and provenance – if you can do all that and still sell at a fair price, you’re winning, according to the Saunders.

Product is King

They don’t buy into the “craft versus commercial” divide either. “Booze is social. First thing I do when I land in Australia? Drink a shit lager with a mate.” What matters is quality, not posturing. That includes working with under-represented artists, from new musicians (everything here is soundtracked by rock, blues, outlaw country… including the distillery tour) or the North London tattooist who designed the Renegade Gin label – a ‘new age’ take on an ‘old age’ spirit, wrapped in a story of modern and historic London.

The Saunders are not in it for the PR. They’ve had their heads down, making product. A recent English Whisky Guild meeting at Westminster reminded them they’re part of a bigger thing – a movement happening right here in England. They brought Debt Collector whisky with them and saw it welcomed for the ambition and clarity of vision it had. 

Multigrain whisky. Bourbon-inspired. But unmistakably London. “We’re not here setting the world on fire and claiming that we’re fucking next Macallan. I know one thing we are, and that’s eight years of blood, sweat and tears. Where it ends up being seen in the global industry is out for judgment. I know one thing, Product is King”. 

Tasting Doghouse Distillery spirits

We’ll end with my notes from the tasting I did at the distillery, which will give you a snapshot of each of these signature products. I will be having a Baller Chilli Vodka Bloody Mary this weekend for sure. I recommend you do the same. 

Baller Vodka – The vodka is made with wheat, and it’s apparent when tasting it. It’s sweet and creamy, very vanilla and a little apricot perhaps, with black pepper spice prickling away at the back. 

Baller Chilli Bacon Vodka – It’s definitely spicy, if you’re not good with spice, you’ll need to mix this. But there’s plenty of Frazzles-style bacon too as well as red fruity notes. Add the tomato mix and it sings. 

Debt Collector Moonshine (Unaged) – Corn led with a classic creamy sweet quality (vanilla, banana, almost caramel), plus a lick of salt popcorn and moonshine heat. It’s peppery and has a hint of red chilli earthiness to it. Very interesting. I want to make cocktails with it. Saunders recommends Sours, Daiquiris, Negroni, Penicillin… 

Debt Collector Moonshine (Cask Aged 1 Year) – There’s a lot of development already, with a distinct oak character that’s very charred and sweet and all American oak. It’s really nutty on the nose too, like honeyed peanuts, with some of that red chilli heat again. It’s very sweet on the palate, think butterscotch, banana, coconut, cherries, red apple, and peanut brittle. Char and cinnamon linger. I like it. 

Debt Collector Whisky *NEW* – There’s a big, almost Dr Pepper style cherry note at the core of this whisky, as well as orange peel and apple. The fruitiness is much more developed, but we’re still very much in American oak territory with caramel, honey, coconut, banana milkshake, milk chocolate… The old familiar Doghouse bite is there, black pepper and red chilli. There’s a lot of symmetry from nose to palate with more of that familiar sweet, nutty character.

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