For years now, small-batch beer brewing has been booming in America. Now this same careful attention is being paid to making stronger stuff, with craft distilleries springing up around the country.

In 2008, Stuart Hobson started the Character Approved Heartland Distillers, the first newly licensed distillery in Indiana since Prohibition. He now produces award-winning artisan vodka using local corn and has just introduced a gin as well, appropriately named Prohibition Gin.

Hobson has been in the spirits business for 17 years and owned a small chain of wine and spirits stores for a time. "But I had the itch to actually make something," he says. "It's in my blood, I guess; my family had operated a small tool manufacturing company in Seymour, Indiana, since 1872." While traveling, he came across a small distillery in Michigan. After some research, Hobson realized that Indiana once had a thriving distillery industry, dating back 200 years--and that today, Indiana farmers provide much of the corn to produce Kentucky bourbons. "With that," he says, "the idea of Heartland Distillers was born."

Using copper pot stills built to his specifications by Germany's oldest distillery fabricator, Hobson produces small 1,000-liter batches of vodka and gin. Each batch takes eight days to complete, and is then bottled by hand. "There are no machines bottling and packaging our spirits," says Hobson. "We even apply our labels by hand."

Heartland's Indiana Vodka is distilled six times. During each distillation, the distillers extract only the heart of the batch, separating out any impurities, to produce a spectacularly clean, crisp vodka. Obviously, they're doing something right: This year, Indiana Vodka was awarded a Gold Medal at the World Spirits Competition in San Francisco, one of the most influential and respected spirits competitions in the world.

Heartland's Prohibition Gin is made with the same exacting care, using fresh herbs and botanicals and time-honored 19th-century techniques. During the final distillation, the essences of the herbs and botanicals are gently extracted as the alcohol vapor rises up through the still. The resulting gin is smooth and aromatic.

By day, Hobson obsesses over spirits, but after hours, he plays the field. He says people are surprised to sometimes find a glass of Cabernet in his hand at parties. He tells them, "Vodka is my day job. I don't have to drink it all the time."

[Image: Heartland Distillers]