A beer, a still order and a slow start.

Copperworks Distilling Co. was started in Seattle by Jason Parker and Micah Nutt, two brewers who, The Whiskey Wash reported in 2016, first talked about the idea “over a beer” some six years earlier. Sources differ slightly on the date. Whisky Advocate reported in June 2024 that the distillery on Alaskan Way, on Seattle’s downtown waterfront, opened in 2013, and the company’s own press releases of 2025 and 2026 say the same; an article published by the Port of Seattle in June 2024 says the pair founded the company in 2012.

Parker’s background is in beer. Whisky Magazine reported in July 2026 that he started in 1989 as the first brewer at Pike Place Brewery, the business now called Pike Brewing Company, near Pike Place Market, and that he later took degrees in chemistry and microbiology and worked at other breweries. The company’s press release of November 2025 makes the same point about Pike, and notes that Copperworks opened near Pike on the waterfront nearly 25 years after Pike tapped its first keg. Nutt also came from craft brewing, Whisky Advocate reported.

The distillery’s equipment came from Scotland. In a May 2026 press release, Parker said the decision “to commission custom copper stills from Forsyths of Scotland” did not take long to make, and The Whiskey Wash reported in 2016 that the copper pot stills had taken a year and a half to be made by hand. Copperworks says it makes small-batch American single malt whiskey, a series of gins and a vodka, all from malted barley.

Beer without hops, then copper.

The idea that shapes the brand is simple: make good beer, then distil it. Parker told Whisky Magazine in 2026 that the company was formed “with the concept of making perfect beer and turning it into whiskey.” The Port of Seattle described the spirits in 2024 as “brewed” without hops and then distilled. According to Whisky Magazine, the beer is brewed for Copperworks at partner breweries in the area rather than at the distillery, and is given a conditioning stage borrowed from brewing, so that about three weeks pass between cooking the grain and filling the still. Parker told the magazine that, as a founding member of the American Single Malt Whiskey Commission, he asked for wording in the category’s definition that allows fermentation to take place away from the distillery.

The first whiskey was due in the Seattle tasting room in August 2016. The Whiskey Wash reported that Release 001 had been double distilled from pale malted barley, aged for 30 months in new full-size American oak barrels made for Copperworks in Kentucky, and bottled at 104 proof, with every bottle labelled by hand and signed by the distillers.

The core whiskeys have since been sold as numbered Releases, several of them built around a single barley variety. Craft Spirits Magazine reported in July 2022 that Release 045 used single-variety Fritz barley from a farm in the Skagit Valley; Whisky Advocate reported in 2024 that Releases 049 and 050 used the same variety, malted pale for one and Vienna-style for the other. A Scotch Cask release announced in May 2026 used Baronesse barley from Joseph’s Grainery in Colfax, Washington, pale malted at LINC Malting, distilled in 2019 and matured in a cask that had previously held Scotch whisky at Auchroisk, the company says.

Links to Seattle’s brewing history recur. In November 2025 the company released Pike Kilt Lifter Whiskey, a collaboration with Pike Brewing made from an unhopped version of Pike’s Kilt Lifter Scotch-style ale, a recipe Parker helped develop; the base was brewed at Pike’s brewhouse to Pike’s specifications and aged more than five years in new American oak, the press release says.

American single malt, defined.

The seven brands in this group are all American craft distillers: Koval, FEW, Westward, Stranahan’s, Garrison Brothers, Kings County and Copperworks. They sit at different points in the trade, from founder-run distilleries to names that have passed to larger drinks groups, and they make different styles of whiskey, from bourbon and rye to single malt.

One category in particular has been defined only recently. In December 2024 the US Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) announced a standard of identity for “American single malt whisky,” effective on 19 January 2025, in response to petitions from several distillers and the American Single Malt Whisky Commission. Under the rule, such a whisky must be mashed, distilled and aged in the United States; distilled entirely at one US distillery, to 160 proof or less, from a fermented mash of 100 percent malted barley; stored in oak barrels of no more than 700 litres; and bottled at not less than 80 proof, the TTB says. The word “straight” may be added for whisky aged at least two years, and labels have a five-year transition period. VinePair reported in 2019 that the commission’s founding members, when it formed in 2016, included Copperworks, FEW Spirits and House Spirits Distillery, listed with its Westward single malt.

A craft whiskey’s identity is usually carried by a label, a name and the place it promises, because the company behind it may have changed hands or grown beyond where it started. Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its spirits are made and how its bottles and labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A numbered bottle and a brewery’s memory.

Copperworks is co-owned by its founders. The May 2026 press release names Parker as president and co-founder, Nutt as co-founder, and Jeff Kanof as co-owner and vice president. In 2024, Whisky Advocate reported, the company raised money through an equity crowdfunding campaign on StartEngine.

The brand has also grown beyond the waterfront. The Port of Seattle reported in June 2024 that a second site in Kenmore, Washington, had opened with a tasting room and cocktail bar; Whisky Advocate reported that a farm-to-table kitchen there, De La Soil, would be run by the chefs Cody and Andrea Westerfield, and Whisky Magazine described it as open daily in 2026. In June 2024 Copperworks also announced plans to take over Pike Brewing’s 30-barrel brewhouse and its former space on Post Alley, near Pike Place Market, as a brewing centre and barrel warehouse, giving it a brewing facility of its own for the first time; Whisky Advocate reported that no timeline had been set.

The packaging has had to adapt. In July 2022, Craft Spirits Magazine reported that Releases 044 and 045 came out in a new bottle because, Parker said, supply-chain problems had made the usual bottles impossible to source; the company said it was working on a proprietary glass bottle, and Kanof said “what’s inside them” was unchanged.

For a design guide, Copperworks shows how a small distillery can make its production method — brewery-style beer, Scottish copper and a running release number — the backbone of an identity. Compare Westland, another Seattle single malt maker, and Balcones, a fellow founding member of the American Single Malt Whiskey Commission. For this guide we use copper, cask brown and malt cream with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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