From Blasting Caps to Bourbon Barrels: Powdermen Spirits Plants Its Flag in Windsor, Connecticut
There is a specific kind of stubbornness that separates a hobbyist who dreams about distilling from someone who actually builds a distillery. Frank Lucca belongs firmly in the second category — and now, after a decade of converting a explosives career into a whiskey-making one, his family is doubling down with a move to a new, larger home in Windsor, Connecticut.
A Connecticut distillery has doubled its footprint and moved from Simsbury to Windsor. Powdermen Spirits Company makes small-batch bourbon and corn whiskey, and the operation is owned and run by Frank Lucca and his son Vince. The relocation is more than a change of address. It signals the end of a long incubation period and the beginning of what the Luccas clearly intend to be a serious, full-scale craft spirits brand operating at the center of New England's still-emerging whiskey scene.
A New Address, a Bigger Stage
The family has spent several months repurposing its new 4,000-square-foot premises at 625 Day Hill Road, and is aiming for a grand opening in August. The new location will include a retail outlet to sell spirits and related merchandise. For a distillery that spent years operating in a compact space behind a restaurant in Simsbury, 4,000 square feet represents a genuine leap in ambition. Room to ferment more wash, run the still more often, fill more barrels, and actually stock shelves — these are problems Powdermen has not had the luxury of solving until now.
The business has also upgraded and expanded its still system alongside the move — a critical detail. In the world of small-batch distilling, the still is everything. Its geometry, its copper content, the speed at which you run it, the cuts you make — all of it shapes flavor. Upgrading the hardware while simultaneously increasing production space suggests the Luccas are not simply continuing what they were doing in Simsbury with more elbow room. They are reconfiguring the entire production pipeline.
Windsor's Planning and Zoning Commission voted 5-0 on July 14 to approve a special use for Powdermen Spirits Company at 625 Day Hill Road. That unanimous vote is telling. Local zoning boards rarely hand out approvals with zero dissent unless the applicants have done their homework and the neighbors have no serious objections. A distillery is allowed in the industrial zone, Town Planner Todd Sealy said, but Powdermen needed the special-use approval to make retail sales directly to customers. The distinction matters: without retail approval, a distillery is just a factory. With it, it becomes a destination.
Lucas said the business also plans a tasting room, where visitors could receive free samples. The commission minutes say state rules allow up to two ounces of alcohol per person per visit as a free sample. The approval does not allow a bar or paid alcohol service. So while Powdermen won't be pouring cocktails for cash anytime soon, the framework for a genuine visitor experience is in place. Sealy said the town would need to change its zoning rules before the business could pursue that type of operation. That's a door left ajar rather than closed — and Windsor wouldn't be the first Connecticut municipality to revisit its zoning language as craft beverage tourism grows.
What They're Making — and How They're Making It
The business plans to make its spirits on-site in Windsor and sell bottles, shirts, hats, glassware and other merchandise there. The distillery plans to make bourbon and corn whiskey, with hopes of eventually adding brandies made with locally sourced fruit and vodka. That last piece — locally sourced fruit brandies — is an interesting tell. It suggests the Luccas are thinking seasonally and regionally, connecting their spirits program to Connecticut's agricultural calendar rather than treating ingredients as commodity inputs to be sourced from the cheapest available market.
The commitment to local grain is central to understanding what Powdermen actually is. Powdermen Spirits is a Connecticut craft distillery making bourbon and whiskey with 100% CT-grown grain. All of their products are made with local ingredients, with corn from Pleasant View Farms in Somers and malted barley from Thrall Family Farm in Windsor. That's not a marketing talking point — it is a genuine constraint that shapes the flavor of every bottle. Heirloom grains grown in Connecticut soil carry different flavor compounds than commodity yellow corn shipped from the Midwest. The terroir argument that wine drinkers take for granted is real in whiskey too, even if American producers are slower to advertise it.
The grain itself is specifically notable. Their journey begins with premium Wapsie Valley corn, chosen for its rich oils and naturally smooth, full-bodied character. Wapsie Valley is an open-pollinated heirloom variety that predates modern hybrid corn by decades. It is oilier, more complex, and harder to source than standard yellow dent corn — which is precisely why most large distilleries don't bother with it. For a nano-distillery trying to distinguish itself, it's exactly the right call.
On the production side, each batch is carefully distilled in custom copper pot stills, where tradition meets control. The result is a spirit that's exceptionally clean, layered with depth, and finished with a bold yet balanced edge. Utilizing a traditional sour-mash technique, they recycle a portion of the previous mash to ensure consistency and a complex, tangy depth of flavor that defines the Powdermen character. Sour mashing is the same foundational technique used by virtually every major Kentucky distillery — it buffers pH and creates flavor continuity across batches. The difference is that at a nano scale, the recycled backset represents a much higher proportion of the total mash, intensifying its effect.
They utilize long, cool fermentation cycles to allow the yeast to develop delicate esters and nuanced profiles that rapid industrial processes simply can't replicate. They lean into pre-prohibition tradition by using hand-crafted Adirondack oak and a low barrel entry proof, ensuring a bourbon with exceptional richness and a velvety viscosity. Low barrel entry proof — coming in well below the legal maximum of 125 proof — means more water and less alcohol going into the wood. More water means more interaction with the char layer. The result, done right, is a faster extraction of wood sugars, vanillins, and tannins without the harsh edges that high-proof entry can sometimes produce.
The Products: Flyrock and Blackwick
At the time of writing, Powdermen's bottled lineup centers on two core expressions that have been available since the Simsbury days. They'd bottled two spirits: Flyrock Corn Whisky, a clear unaged expression in the moonshine tradition, and a Black Wick Bourbon — that same corn whiskey aged in a charred oak barrel for two years. The naming convention is worth noting. "Flyrock" is a blasting term for unintended rock fragments ejected during an explosion — appropriate for an unaged, volatile clear spirit coming off the still hot and raw. "Blackwick" evokes the burnt fuse, the char, the slow burn of a bourbon that's been sleeping in wood.
One release delivered dense oak, heirloom corn character, and surprising maturity for a young bourbon — a result that reviewers in the craft spirits space have noticed. The two-year age statement on the Blackwick is short by Kentucky standards, but Connecticut's climate works differently than Kentucky's. Dramatic temperature swings between seasons accelerate barrel interaction, potentially extracting in two Connecticut winters what might take three or four years in a climate-controlled rickhouse further south.
Powdermen Spirits bourbon can be found in liquor stores across Granby, Southington, Torrington, Enfield, Wethersfield, and Connecticut. The distribution footprint is modest but growing — a realistic reflection of what a nano operation can sustain. With the Windsor facility online and a larger still system in place, that footprint should expand meaningfully.
The Man Behind the Still: Frank Lucca's Road From Terra Dinamica to the Tasting Room
Frank Lucca's biography is the kind of thing that sounds invented but isn't. Lucca spent most of his career in the explosives business, doing contract blasting for mining, construction and demolition projects through his company Terra Dinamica. At its height, the company had offices in five countries and 90 employees, but Lucca says he's now downsized to occasional projects and consulting. He has taken Powdermen Spirits from a hobby business to full-time production over the last 10 years.
Running a global explosives company teaches a specific discipline. You learn that tolerances matter. That timing is everything. That chemistry is not abstract — it is immediate, physical, and unforgiving. Those same instincts transfer directly to distillation, where a few degrees of temperature at the wrong moment can ruin a cut, and where patience is the one thing you cannot fake or rush. Transitioning to full-time distilling wasn't a career change; it was a refinement. The discipline required to handle high-velocity explosives translates directly to the patience needed for high-proof spirits.
The name itself carries this history. The name comes from "Powdermen" — explosives engineers and miners — reflecting Frank's background in the industry and a lesser-known historical link between mining and distilling. That connection became personal through Frank's friendship with retired U.S. Special Forces operator Charles "Charlie" Gray, who introduced him to traditional moonshining methods. A simple push to commit, buy a still, and start, became the foundation of the distillery, with Gray and mentor Ed Walter remaining central figures in its story. Most distilleries trace their origin to a passion for drinking. Powdermen traces its to a friendship forged in an entirely different kind of controlled combustion.
Powdermen Spirits owners Vince Lucca, Frank Lucca and Katherine Lucas told the commission the company has operated in Simsbury since 2016. What began as a side project has become, a decade on, a legitimate manufacturing and retail enterprise anchored in a 4,000-square-foot Windsor facility. That arc — from hobby to full-time production over ten years — mirrors the trajectory of dozens of America's most respected craft distilleries, most of which spent years operating below the radar before the market and their own output caught up with their ambitions.
Windsor as a Strategic Choice
Windsor, Connecticut is not an accident. "Windsor isn't just a location; it's our backbone," the distillery states on its website. The town sits at the northern edge of Hartford County, straddling the Farmington and Connecticut rivers, and its industrial corridors along Day Hill Road represent exactly the kind of flexible commercial real estate that growing craft producers need — large, affordable, accessible, and zoned for manufacturing. The location at 625 Day Hill Road places Powdermen in a working industrial district rather than a downtown tasting room corridor, which aligns with their identity as a production-first operation that happens to welcome visitors rather than a hospitality venue that also makes spirits.
There's also meaningful agricultural proximity. Their malted barley comes from Thrall Family Farm in Windsor — the same town where the new distillery now stands. Shortening the supply chain from grain to mash isn't just logistically convenient. It is philosophically consistent with a brand built around Connecticut provenance. When the barley farm and the still share a zip code, the terroir argument becomes easier to make and harder to dismiss.
Eyes on What's Next: Brandy, Expansion, and a Tasting Room Vision
"We're going to branch off and start doing some brandies and maybe vodka and rum once we have more capacity," Frank Lucca told the Hartford Business Journal. That statement reflects both the limitations of the past and the opportunities of the present. In Simsbury, capacity constraints kept the lineup tight. In Windsor, with a larger facility and an upgraded still system, diversification becomes possible.
The brandy ambition is particularly interesting. Connecticut grows apples, pears, and a range of stone fruits across its river valleys. A brandy program built around locally sourced Connecticut fruit would situate Powdermen within a tradition that predates bourbon by centuries — early American colonists were distilling apple brandy long before Bourbon County, Kentucky was even a county. A Lucca-style fruit brandy, made with the same disciplined approach they apply to corn, could become one of the most distinctive products in the New England spirits market.
The business plans to make its spirits on-site in Windsor and sell bottles, shirts, hats, glassware and other merchandise there. The merchandise component shouldn't be dismissed as an afterthought. For a nano-distillery operating on tight margins, branded merchandise is real revenue, and it converts casual visitors into walking advertisements. A customer who buys a Powdermen hat at the distillery and wears it to a cookout in Enfield or Wethersfield is doing marketing work that no ad budget can fully replicate.
What It Means for Connecticut's Craft Spirits Scene
Connecticut's craft distillery industry has grown quietly but steadily over the past decade, benefiting from state legislation that has made it progressively easier for small producers to manufacture and sell directly to consumers. The model Powdermen is building in Windsor — on-site production, retail sales, free samples, and an eventual tasting room — represents the mature expression of what that legislative framework was designed to enable. It is not a passive participant in the state's spirits economy. It is an example of what Connecticut craft production can look like when a family commits fully to the work.
Powdermen focuses on small-batch, locally driven whiskey, built around 100% Connecticut-grown grain. At its core, Powdermen Spirits is about process, place, and legacy. Every bottle reflects a hands-on approach and a deliberate choice to prioritize character over scale, while honoring the individuals and experiences that shaped the distillery along the way. In an industry where "craft" is routinely applied to products sourced from Indiana and merely redistilled or bottled elsewhere, that description means something specific and verifiable at Powdermen.
Powdermen does, in fact, distill rather than shipping in corn whisky from Indiana — a point worth making explicitly, because the practice of sourcing bulk neutral spirit or young whiskey from large Midwestern distilleries and branding it as "craft" remains widespread and quietly controversial. A distillery that grows its grain locally, distills it on-site, ages it in-house, and bottles it by hand occupies a fundamentally different category than one that purchases finished spirit and slaps a label on it.
The Long Game: From Nano to Notable
Ten years is a long time to nurse a distillery from a hobby into a business. Most people who buy a still and start experimenting never get past the garage phase. Frank and Vince Lucca got past it, then past the small-office-park phase in Simsbury, and now they are standing in a 4,000-square-foot Windsor facility with an upgraded still system, full retail approval, and a tasting room in the works. The explosive industry metaphor writes itself: the detonation was slow, but it's happening.
The August grand opening target gives them a summer launch window — ideal for foot traffic, for building local awareness, and for establishing the Windsor location as a weekend destination before fall arrives and the holiday buying season begins. Connecticut whiskey drinkers who have been tracking Powdermen from the Simsbury days will want to make the drive to Day Hill Road. Those who are discovering the brand for the first time at the new facility will find a distillery with a decade of production knowledge behind it, a legitimate grain-to-glass story, and a lineup that is only going to grow.
Every barrel is tasted by the same hands that filled it. No automated sensors; they use their senses. At a time when automation is reshaping nearly every corner of the food and beverage industry, that statement is a quiet act of defiance. And in the context of a family that spent decades working with explosives — where inattention to sensory detail could kill someone — it carries a weight that most craft distillery origin stories simply don't.
