How to Set Up a Craft Distillery: The Ghana Case Study
By Benedikt Blomendahl, Master Distiller
Setting up a craft distillery is four projects running at once: premises and compliance, equipment, recipes, and people. The equipment is the easy part.
We know that because we have done it. We designed a 200 litre still, had it manufactured to our specification, shipped it to Accra, installed and commissioned it, developed the recipes and trained the team on site for Bella Afrik in Ghana. The same still design runs in our own distilleries in South Africa and Germany. One design, three countries.
Why Ghana is a useful example
Most advice on starting a distillery is written by people describing a distillery they read about. This was a real build in a real market with real constraints. Equipment crossing borders, a team learning distillation from zero, and recipes that had to work with locally available inputs.
Everything below is what we actually did.
Start with the product, not the still
The most common mistake is buying equipment first. A still sized for the wrong product is an expensive ornament.
Before any hardware decision, settle what you are making. Gin needs a botanical basket and fast turnarounds. Rum needs a different cut regime. Whisky needs somewhere to put barrels for years. Then settle how much you need per month, because that sizes the still rather than your ambition does. Then work out what raw material you can reliably get locally, since import dependency kills margins in Africa faster than anything else. And finally, who is buying it and at what price, because the price point decides the quality tier and therefore the process.
For Bella Afrik the answers pointed clearly at a versatile craft scale still. Clean enough for neutral work, suitable for botanical distillation for gin, and flexible enough for more products later.
The equipment: our custom 200 litre design
Rather than buy off the shelf, Benedikt designed a 200 litre still to his own specification and had it manufactured to those specs. The brief was straightforward. Craft scale, versatile, hard wearing, and capable of producing competition quality spirit.
It is the same still that makes our gins in South Africa, the ones that have collected Double Gold medals, and the same design installed in Vechta. When a client buys that design they are not getting a prototype. They are getting the machine that makes our award winners.
For context, our full fleet:
| Still | Role |
|---|---|
| 1000L custom Kothe copper potstill | Base spirit, brandy, production runs |
| 200L custom gin still, our own design | Botanical distillation |
| 20L laboratory still | Recipe development and trials |
The 20 litre lab still is the unsung hero of every project. You develop and fail cheaply at 20 litres so you don't fail expensively at 200. Or rather, you prove success at a reduced risk.
Getting it there and switching it on
Designing and building a still is one problem. A working distillery in Accra is another. That meant shipping, installation, commissioning on site, and the unglamorous work of making a still, a water supply, a heat source and a drainage plan cooperate inside one specific building.
Benedikt flew up personally to install it and run the first distillations. There is no substitute for that. Commissioning remotely is how you end up with expensive copper that nobody trusts to switch on.
Recipes, which is what actually makes or breaks it
A still doesn't make a product. Recipes do.
The Ghana project included full recipe development, building products that work with locally accessible botanicals and inputs at a quality that competes. This is the step most new distilleries underinvest in, and it shows in the glass six months later when sales flatten.
Our approach is to develop at 20 litres in the lab, validate at production scale, then document the recipe precisely enough that a trained operator reproduces it identically every time. A recipe only the founder can make isn't a recipe. It is a hobby.
Training: handing over the craft
We trained the team on site. Running the still, making the cuts, understanding heads, hearts and tails, quality control, cleaning and safety.
The cuts are where the craft lives. Anyone can heat a wash. Knowing exactly when to stop collecting is the difference between a spirit that wins medals and one that gives people headaches. That judgement can be taught, but only hands on.
Compliance and the boring essentials
Every jurisdiction differs, but they all care about the same things. Licensing to produce. Excise registration. Fire and safety compliance, because you are boiling flammable liquid. Water and effluent. Labelling rules for the market you are selling into.
Do this in parallel with the equipment build. It takes longer than you think and it isn't optional.
What a full setup looks like
| Phase | What happens | Typical time |
|---|---|---|
| Feasibility and product strategy | Market, volumes, business case | 2 to 4 weeks |
| Equipment specification and manufacture | Design, build to spec | 8 to 16 weeks |
| Premises preparation | Utilities, safety, layout, compliance | Runs in parallel |
| Shipping and installation | Delivery, install, commissioning | 4 to 6 weeks |
| Recipe development | Lab work, then production validation | 4 to 8 weeks |
| Training | Hands on with your team | 1 to 2 weeks on site |
| First production runs | Supervised | 2 to 4 weeks |
Realistically, six to twelve months from decision to sellable product, with equipment manufacture and compliance the two things most likely to slip.
What it costs
It depends almost entirely on scale and how much work your premises need. The still is rarely the biggest line. Premises preparation, compliance and working capital for stock usually are.
What we can do is build an honest model with you before you commit anything. Benedikt is a chartered global management accountant as well as a Master Distiller, so the feasibility work and the equipment specification come from the same team.
Ways to work with us
Full turnkey, covering design, equipment, installation, recipes and training. Equipment sourcing on its own, local or international, specified to your product. Recipes and training only, which suits existing distilleries that need better product. Or feasibility and business planning, before you spend anything at all.
If you are thinking about it, the cheapest hour you will ever spend is the first conversation. Sometimes the honest answer is not yet, and here is why.