Scott and Todd Leopold opened their first operation as an eco-brewery in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1999, bringing complementary skills from different worlds: Todd trained as a fermentation scientist at the Siebel Institute of Technology in Chicago and attended distilling school in Lexington, Kentucky, while Scott engineered the facility to minimize waste and pollution. After nearly a decade of craft brewing, the brothers made a bold decision—they closed operations in Michigan and relocated to their native Colorado in 2008 to focus exclusively on distilling. The current Leopold Bros. facility, which opened in 2014 in northeast Denver, represents an obsessive commitment to authentic American whiskey-making. Unlike most craft distilleries that outsource grain processing, Leopold Bros. controls every step: they malt their own barley on a traditional floor-malting operation (the largest of its kind in any U.S. distillery), mill, mash, ferment, distill, age, and bottle on-site. Todd's fermentation science background drives relentless experimentation with yeast strains and fermentation temperatures. The brothers are not interested in shortcuts. What truly sets them apart is their three-chamber pot still—a distillation apparatus that vanished from American distilling nearly a century ago but was meticulously reconstructed from historical manuscripts by Todd Leopold. Only a handful of three-chamber stills exist globally. This equipment was the standard for pre-Prohibition American rye production, and Leopold Bros. is the only distillery in the world using a proper three-chamber still in current production. The engineering matters: the three-chamber design allows for more nuanced copper interaction and separates spirit collection by quality fraction in ways modern column stills cannot replicate.
- Floor Malting as Philosophy: Leopold Bros. floor malts their grains by hand—literally turning barrels of sprouting grain manually to control the malting process. This labor-intensive tradition, nearly extinct in modern distilling, yields more complex enzymatic flavor development than industrial malting.
- Abruzzi Rye Heritage: Their Maryland-Style Rye uses Abruzzi rye, a lower-starch heirloom variety much closer to what distillers used a century ago than modern high-starch rye cultivars. The whiskey captures flavors that had essentially vanished from the American market.
- ADI Distillery of the Year (2015): Leopold Bros. won the American Distilling Institute's prestigious Distillery of the Year award—a massive accomplishment for a small Colorado operation competing against national brands.
- Colorado Grain Obsession: Every grain in their spirits is Colorado-grown—64% corn, 21% floor-malted barley, 15% Abruzzi heritage rye. Local sourcing isn't marketing; it's fundamental to their philosophy.
- Three-Chamber Still Rarity: The three-chamber still represents lost distilling knowledge. Leopold Bros. spent years researching historical documents to rebuild this apparatus—the same type used by 19th-century rye distillers who produced the whiskeys that Kentucky distillers later copied.
- Open Fermentation: They ferment in wooden tanks with both house-cultured and indigenous yeast strains, a practice that introduces microbial complexity most craft distilleries avoid for safety reasons.