Dirty Water Distillery is downtown near the waterfront and Plymouth Rock in Plymouth, MA. They are brand new as of this writing, still building out the customer-facing part of the distillery. 

For now, Dirty Water (the name comes from the iconic bluesy 1960s paean to old Beantown by the Standells) is primarily a rum maker. Their lead-off product, What Knot, is a delicious delicate white rum with fine flavor and no burn. Richmond posted a great write-up in Studying our Knots in which your humble bloggers examined the What Knot every way we could to find cocktails that show it off to good advantage. We named the winning cocktails Knotty Nell and Dirty Nell.

Dirty Water Distillery uses a 200-gallon pot still named Dr. Evil for production. Dr. Evil, shown here, is ably assisted by a much smaller R&D version appropriately named Mini-Me.  

They have an amber rum in the works (Better Knot) and a black rum (Frayed Knot) is on the horizon.

What is it with the knots? Distillers Steve and Pepe have great respect for our friends at Mayflower Brewing; rather than confuse the market with a Mayflower-themed product, they opted to honor the less known Plymouth Cordage Company, which kept this little town on the map for over a century after the Pilgrims were relegated to the history books.   

Dirty Water has another very interesting product due out any day now (as I write this they are waiting only for labels): a wonderful spiced honey liqueur called Velnius, the Lithuanian word for a devil.

Lithuanian? Where did that come from?  Well, Steve is married to a Lithuanian woman, and Pepe is married to her sister, and Pepe is himself Lithuanian! So they could not start making their rums without a nod to the delicious potions of their homeland, of which the Velnius is typical. Those Baltic winter nights are long and cold, and on a cold night everyone likes a kiss of spicy honey!

Dirty Water Distillery's Products, now and coming

• What Knot White Rum - now available in Plymouth at Pioppi's.
• Velnias Honey Liqueur - available very soon
• Better Knot Amber Rum - coming soon
• Frayed Knot Black Rum - coming eventually
• a gin that includes cranberry among the botanicals
• a whiskey collaboration with a craft brewer