Old Station 31 Spirits – defined by family, tradition, service

Heather Graves

Staff

April 7, 2025

DALE – The story behind the start of Old Station 31 Spirits (W9689 State Road 96), Co-owner Tavia Hopfensperger said, is the “classic fable of ‘never say never’ – because you never know what could happen.”

“Did we ever think we were going to be making spirits and opening a distillery?” Hopfensperger – who owns the distillery with her husband, Rob – said. “No, not even remotely. It just happened.”

However, after about eight months into operations – and years into the overall process – Hopfensperger said she and Rob couldn’t imagine doing anything different.

Fermenting an idea

Before embarking on the distillery venture, Hopfensperger said her husband – a press repair, installation and engineering technician – spent much of his time traveling around the world for work.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit and a travel ban was placed, Hopfensperger said Rob experienced a significant uptick in business.

“Most presses come from Europe,” she said. “So, there were companies in the U.S. who had million-dollar pieces of equipment in crates that they couldn’t get any service work done on because there was a travel ban and no one could fly over from Europe. So, they were calling Rob.”

For the next two years, Hopfensperger said Rob “was traveling nonstop.”

“When the travel ban was lifted and people started to move around again, Rob came to me and said, ‘I don’t know if I can do this anymore,’” she said.

Around that same time, Hopfensperger said Rob’s brother opened a restaurant – Wally’s Still – in their hometown of Dale.

“He was working for the restaurant just to help him get things cleaned up and get going,” she said.

Hopfensperger said Rob was also doing a little bartending at Wally’s Still.

“He was seeing how much vodka they were selling,” she said. “So, our initial thought was ‘hey, we can make vodka for the restaurant.’ Well, you can’t do that – it’s illegal. So we expanded it to, ‘well, we’ll just make vodka and distribute it all over. And not only will we make vodka, but we’ll make gin and whiskeys, bourbons and rum.’”

Hopfensperger said when the opportunity to purchase the township’s old fire station – which is actually connected to Wally’s Still – presented itself, the distillery idea took on a life of its own.

When things began taking shape, Hopfensperger said she decided to step away from her 25-year insurance career and dedicate her time to the distillery.

“I was seeing what was happening down there – all of the excitement, and the work, and the creativity, and I went to my husband one day and said, ‘I don’t think I want to work in my own career anymore. I want to be at the distillery,’” she said.

From then on, Hopfensperger said she and Rob put everything they had into turning Old Station 31 Distillery into what it is today.

So many variables

That process, Hopfensperger said, took about a year and a half.

Mission one, she said, was purchasing a distiller that would work in the former fire station.

“The building only has so much space,” she said. “The fire station is not huge – it was only a two-bay fire station. Because it was a volunteer organization, it wasn’t a very big building, so we had to find distilling equipment that actually fit into that little space.”

Hopfensperger said this meant they couldn’t purchase a distiller “off the shelf – it just wouldn’t fit.”

“My husband designed the layout for how it needed to all fit in there,” she said. “Then he had to find some place to actually manufacture it and make it for us.”

Once a manufacturer was selected, Hopfensperger said the next step in the process was permitting.

“The permitting – that’s honestly what took the longest time,” she said. “There are many of them that you have to get, but yet there’s nowhere for you to go and see a checklist of permits you need.”

In some cases, Hopfensperger said they would find out that they needed a permit when they were filling out the paperwork for a different permit.

“It would ask us for our FDA permit number – ‘do you have an FDA permit number, please fill it in here,’” she said. “We didn’t even know we needed one, but now we’ll get one.”

Once they received their custom-designed and -built distiller, Hopfensperger said up next was making sure all the plumbing was hooked up correctly – “there’s a crazy amount of plumbing to be done for a distillery.”

Hopfensperger said even before they started experimenting with batches, they knew they wanted the base product to be made from 100% white, organic corn.

“It took a little while to find a granary big enough, with enough room, to actually sell us corn,” she said. “Then it was a matter of getting the right enzymes, the right grind on the corn.”

Though they hadn’t expected it, Hopfensperger said “we did our first batch, and it worked – we actually got alcohol.”

“It was terrible – it tasted awful, it smelled terrible, but we knew somewhere hidden in all of the variables that you have to play around with was what we thought to be a really good product,” she said. “So we kept trying.”

By batch five, Hopfensperger said “we finally cracked the code.”

“We cooked it long enough, we put in the right amount of enzymes – we did all of the right things,” she said. “And then when it was going through the still, you could smell a change in it.” 

As they looked “optimistically at each other, wide-eyed,” Hopfensperger said the realization hit – “this could be it.”

“It was magic, in my opinion,” she said. “By some miracle, all of the stars aligned, because there’s quite a few variables that you have to adjust if it’s not right. You don’t know if it was the size of the corn that you ground. Was it the corn itself? Was it the amount of enzymes, the amount of water, how long you cooked it, the fermentation didn’t go well? And you can only change one variable at a time – so it could have taken us a lot longer.”

When they smelled and tasted the batch’s proof, Hopfensperger said “it was the magic, there it is – that’s what we’ve been waiting for.”

“And that’s the recipe and the production process we’ve used since then,” she said.

‘Fun science variables’

Though they eventually found the right mix of ingredients and ideal production process, Hopfensperger said there were challenges, or what she likes to call “fun science variables.”

“You wanted, on occasion, to be disappointed with what you ended up with,” she said. “Because there was kind of this eager curiosity around, ‘I wonder what we did wrong, because that looks like porridge.’”

In the moment, when it was 2 a.m. and they were “literally scooping buckets of corn out of the cooker,” Hopfensperger said distilling wasn’t necessarily fun, but the steps that followed definitely were.

“It’s like, ‘okay, what can we change, and how much do we change it by?’” she said. “All those variables, you didn’t even know they existed until you were in them. I didn’t know corn could do that.”

Hopfensperger said “magic batch No. 5,” was created in May 2024, and Old Station 31 Spirits opened to the public a few months later in August.

“We started off with a small signature cocktail list,” she said. “One unique thing about white organic corn is it has a really sweet profile to it – which sounds funny, but it does. So, we invested quite a bit of time in finding the right combination of ingredients that would highlight the flavor of white organic corn vodka – that’s what our signature cocktail list is. You could make those cocktails with other vodkas, and they would have just a little bit of a different taste.”

A name with a story

Being housed in a former fire station, Hopfensperger said, isn’t the only reasoning behind the distillery’s name.

Rather, she said it’s more about the camaraderie, selflessness and brotherhood that fire service, especially volunteer fire service, means to the community of Dale and the Hopfensperger family.

“That building is a pretty important component of our town, but also to my family’s history,” she said. “Both my sons, my daughters-in-law, my dad, my brother, his wife – they are all in the fire service. Collectively, we have about 114 years worth of service in the fire industry.”

The distillery’s connection with fire service, Hopfensperger said, even extends onto the back of the bottles of Old Station 31 Spirits products.

“On the back of every one of our bottles, there’s a description of our experiences with the fire department that connect us to that flavor that we’re making,” she said.

The establishment, Hopfensperger said, also houses a museum of sorts, complete with old artifacts from the Town of Dale fire station as well as from other surrounding fire departments.

“We originally thought that it would just be filled with artifacts from the Dale department, but soon enough, other fire departments around us were bringing in things and asking if we wanted to display them,” she said.

Community support

Hopfensperger said there are two “distinct camps” of feedback and support the distillery has received since opening last July.

“There’s one group of people who have lived in the Town of Dale for decades, and they recall the old fire station being in that building,” she said. “They’ll come in and tell us stories and reminisce about their memories in the fire station. That’s been so amazing to hear the history of that building and to see the smiles on their faces. They’re excited that the fire station is open again, and they can come in. They can come in and stand in a spot where they stood when they were 12 years old and their dad popped a fire helmet on their head for the first time.”

That sense of community the distillery has rekindled for the residents of Dale, Hopfensperger said, has extended outside the township as well.

“We also have people coming from all over the State of Wisconsin, and there’s actually been a couple of people coming from Arizona – their grandfather served in the local fire department,” she said. 

Hopfensperger said there is a plaque on the wall inside the distillery that has the names of former firefighters and chiefs on it. 

“People walk over there looking for their relatives to see if they’re on that board,” she said. “And then when they find them, they tell you the whole story about, ‘oh, I remember when grandpa was here.’ So, you get to hear this history – it’s incredible. We never saw that coming, to be honest, that’s been one of the most pleasant surprises.”

The “other camp of supporters,” Hopfensperger said, are the cheerleaders.

“They are there cheering you on – you’re starting a new business in this little, tiny town,” she said. “We hope it brings other business into Dale – the ‘build it and they will come’ type mentality. There’s a sense of growth and advancement in our little town, and people are really enjoying that.”

Hopfensperger said it’s important to remember that supporting local businesses can extend a little further beyond the three-to-five-mile radius around their homes.

“Local can sometimes be within a three-mile radius of your house, and sometimes it can be within a 30-mile radius of your house, depending on what you’re looking for,” she said.

Now and what’s to come

Currently, Hopfensperger said the distillery is open from 5-9 p.m. Saturdays and from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sundays, during which they not only offer the distillery’s three spirits – original vodka, berry vodka and citrus vodka – but also signature cocktails.

Many of the cocktail names, she said, are inspired by the distillery’s fire service connections, including:

• Old Fire Station 31 Smokey Lemonade
• The Dalmation
• The Lieutenants Orange Old Fashion
• The Pumper Truck, Hook -N- Ladder
• The Chiefs Chocolate Shake

Now that the distillery has had nearly a solid year of its vodka products, Hopfensperger said the plan is to perfect and release other spirit options, such as bourbon, gin, whiskey and rum.

“Our spring rollout – so things that we have ready to bottle that will be up for sale in the next few months – include a lavender vodka, and then we have a bourbon coming out,” she said. “We also will be releasing gin this summer. We have an herbal, floral gin and an orange gin.”

Then, Hopfensperger said, they are in the development phase with other potential products – “meaning we are experimenting – can we even do this?”

“That’s kind of what’s on the future docket,” she said. “I want to be making whiskey as well this summer.”

Taking it all in

From the initial concept, to the creation of their first batch, to the discovery of the “perfect batch,” to opening the distillery to the public, to finding success in their first year of operation – Hopfensperger said they sometimes forget to pause and recognize just how far they’ve come.

“We have this awesome business, and we don’t sit down to appreciate all of the hard work and effort we’ve put into it,” she said. “You can get distracted by 20,000 other things that are happening at the distillery. But every now and then, we do take a moment, where we will stop each other and be like, ‘Okay, let’s just look around at what we’ve done. Look at how far we’ve come. Remember how much effort we put into this so that we can continue to be not only proud of what we’re going to do but to be proud of what we’ve done.’”

Hopfensperger said they’ve created “a really awesome product.”

“There is an immense satisfaction in knowing that you started with a bag of corn and ended up with this really lovely flavor,” she said. 

Though other distillers make great products in their own right, Hopfensperger said it’s rewarding to know Old Station 31 Spirits products as all theirs.

“It’s unique to us, no one else can replicate that,” she said. “They don’t know the nuances of what we do at the distillery and how long it took us to fine-tune all of those things.”

For more on Old Station 31 Spirits, visit oldstation31.com.