Milk Street Distillery

What to Expect at Milk Street Distillery

On a cold break in a construction trailer in Newark, Gordon Geerhart scrolled past a news item about New Jersey loosening its distillery laws and showed his brother Mike. They quit their jobs, mortgaged their houses, and spent two years plumbing out a shell of a building in downtown Branchville while they waited on a license. Milk Street Distillery opened in January 2017, the first distillery in Sussex County in more than 70 years.

The building went up in the late 1800s as a feed store, grain sacked to the ceiling, and a photo from that era hangs over the fireplace. The street outside was a causeway for Borden Dairy, with one creamery behind the building and another across the road, which is how Milk Street and then the distillery got their names. When hand sanitizer vanished from shelves in 2020, the brothers retooled to make it and gave it to local first responders.

Spirits and Cocktails

Everything is mashed, fermented, distilled, and bottled on site, true grain to glass with no bought-in neutral spirit propping up the gin. The shelf reads like a dare: Murder Bourbon, Vexed Gin, Blind Bettie Gin, Wooden Leg Rum, Dam Break Rye, and War Penny, a cherry-wood-smoked bourbon with a real 1943 steel penny set in the wax of every bottle. Tastings, flights, and cocktails are all on offer, and tours run every half hour, walk-in only.

Chicken Shit Bingo

Buy a drink, get a number. Once an hour a hen goes into a pen on a big numbered mat and the room watches. The first poop of the hour wins that number a free drink, and the second wins a t-shirt you can’t buy. It runs the second and fourth Sunday of the month, first bird on the mat at 2:00, and it’s a warm-weather event, so don’t build a January trip around it. The chickens are Gordon’s. The brothers took the idea from a travel show segment about a bar in Texas, and it has become the thing Milk Street is known for.

Live Music, Food Trucks, and Events

Saturday is the big night, with a food truck out front, a full band on stage, and seating for roughly 200 outside from spring into late fall. Winter moves indoors with duos and trios. The rest of the calendar carries trivia on first and third Sundays, Music Bingo and Name That Tune on Fridays, and two annual events worth planning around: Bourbon, Bluegrass and BBQ in August and the Milk Street ShakeDown. There’s no kitchen, but between the food trucks, bringing your own, and delivery from nearby Branchville restaurants, nobody goes hungry.

Food Trucks and Bringing Your Own

Milk Street has no kitchen and has never pretended otherwise. What it has instead is a rotating cast of food trucks parked out front most Friday and Saturday nights, and they’re good ones: Neapolitan pizza fired at 900 degrees in a mobile gas oven, Portuguese BBQ, Cuban empanadas, Greek spanakopita, wood-smoked brisket. The events calendar names who’s coming, so it’s worth a look before you drive out. If nothing on the schedule grabs you, or there’s no truck that night, bring your own. Coolers, snacks, a bag of takeout, a whole spread on a picnic table: nobody minds. Plenty of regulars just order a pizza or dinner from a Branchville restaurant and have it delivered to the bar. Milk Street handles the drinks, you handle dinner, and neither side is precious about it.

The Alco-Hauler

Milk Street will also come to you. The Alco-Hauler is a custom built-out trailer, a full bar on wheels pouring the distillery’s own spirits, and it can be rented for weddings and private events. It also turns up around the county under its own steam, including at Lentini Farms in Newton during festival season, so there’s a decent chance you’ll run into it before you ever think about booking it.

The tap list leans seasonal and easy-drinking. The “Word” is blueberry vodka with almond syrup, cranberry, and orange juice. Summer Lovin’ runs vodka with green tea and lemon, there’s a spiked lavender lemonade, and the Fall Mule brings rum together with apple cider, ginger beer, and cinnamon. Simple standards fill in the rest, gin and tonic through Moscow mule, at $11 across the board, with whiskey pours and vodka Red Bull at $15. Rentals go through the distillery directly rather than a booking platform, so email [email protected] or call to ask about dates.

Location and Hours

Milk Street sits a block off US-206 in Branchville, ten minutes from Stokes State Forest and close to other Sussex County breweries and distilleries. The tasting room is open Friday through Sunday. Weekdays are bottle and gift card pickup only, so email ahead to confirm someone’s in.