Earlier this month, Moylan’s Brewery & Restaurant in Novato closed its doors for good after 30 years of award-winning operations. And then, less than two weeks later, Moylan’s Whisky, produced by Stillwater Spirits in Petaluma, swept all the “traditional” categories at the U.S. Open Whiskey and Spirits Championship, capturing the Grand National Champion’s Trophy.

“We destroyed the field this year. It wasn’t even close,” said owner Brendan Moylan, a longtime Novato resident. “We lost by one point last year, and the three times we haven’t won first place, we were second place. We fared really well in this contest.”

Moylan has never been one to dwell on the past. And what a past he’s had. He and a partner opened the venerable Marin Brewing Co. in Larkspur in 1989, and it was a fixture there for 33 years, featuring such perennial favorites as Mt. Tam Pale Ale and San Quentin’s Breakout Stout. In 1995, he opened his namesake brewery in Novato, and, in 2004, he opened Noonan’s Bar and Grill in Larkspur, which operated until 2009.

“I really, really fell in love with whiskey when I was doing the Noonan’s project,” he said. “It was very interesting to see from a world point of view the role that whiskey plays. There’s history behind all these whiskeys.”

In California, because of the three-tiered system — producer, distributor and retailer — you cannot operate two of those categories simultaneously. So, when Moylan decided to produce his own spirits, he had to divest himself of the one property with a full bar. That has changed somewhat with the COVID intervention.

“Whiskey is a little bit different than beer,” Moylan said, “because whiskey has shelf life and it travels well. When it comes to beer, you want it fresh, and it must be kept cold. God knows what might happen to it when it leaves your building.”

All whiskey starts out as beer, essentially — a brewed grain product, which is then distilled into liquor and then aged in barrels, which is where the color comes from. One thing can naturally lead to the next.

“One of the reasons I’m making barley whiskeys is because craft brewers are in love with barley,” Moylan said. “I absolutely cannot stand corn. I’m always teasing people that like bourbon because it’s such a corn beverage. We actually source our corn whiskey. I never put any corn through my mill at Moylan’s. Nonetheless, our bourbon, our cask-strength bourbon, has won numerous awards. It’s probably our most awarded product.”

And this year, those awards were five golds, two silvers and two bronzes. Two of those golds were for their small-batch bourbons (Moylan’s cask-strength 3-year-old and Moylan’s Sanctioned) and one each for their rye (Resistance) and single malt (American single malt) with another gold for an “aged” moonshine (Wiley Howell).

“I think the favorite of the judges was our rye whiskey, our Resistance rye, which is a port barrel-finished aged rye whiskey,” Moylan said. “And it’s beautiful, really rye. Rye does make a nice whiskey.”Moylan tends to favor multiple barrel finishing for his whiskeys, sourcing barrels that had previously contained sherry, port, sauterne and even orange brandy, techniques originally borrowed from scotch. And Moylan spells his whiskey without the “e” in tribute. He has even gone so far as to make an orange brandy just to have a barrel to finish his whiskey in.

“I’ve got a lot of beautiful whiskey that we’ve made over the last 20 years. They’ve aged away, and I’ve got some product that is of an older age,” Moylan said. “Most other craft distillers are really selling off younger products, and so our products are really tasting well. And one of the reasons why we’re winning these awards is because I’ve been patient, or, I don’t know, can we call it procrastination? Whatever you call it, it certainly helps whiskey if you give it time to age.”

Moylan sees similarities between the original craft brewing industry and craft distilling. Brewing might have seen its nadir, but distilling is coming on strong.

“The whiskey business is a lot of fun now,” Moylan said. “There are a lot of good things happening, especially from a consumer point of view. There certainly are a lot more distilleries now, and a lot more smaller distilleries have opened, and you’re seeing a bigger variety of products.”

But he also sees the same pitfalls, one of which is distribution.

“I saw the same thing with beers that I’m seeing with spirits now,” he said. “If you’re super big, you’ve made it over the hump. But if you’re trying to get big, that’s where the dangerous territory is, where you’re throwing a lot of money out. And only a few people succeed.”

But running a distillery is a lot simpler than running a brewery, a restaurant or a string of restaurants. One glaring difference is the number of employees necessary. At one point, Moylan employed 250 people. Moylan’s Distillery now consists of just two employees.

“You’ve got to stay ultra-small so you can stay within yourself and not get yourself exposed to a lot of overhead and debt,” he said. “At Moylan’s (Brewery), one of our things was overhead. Because we had such a big building, we needed to be really busy. And unfortunately, we weren’t being really busy. The younger generation isn’t drinking as much as they used to. They’re a different breed. And my dinosaur social skills didn’t quite work out.”

Moylan says that 20 years ago things were different.

“We were making 100 different beers a year. That was awesome. We had so much fun, and we had the liberty and the freedom to do it because everything was moving. The flow was right. The rotation was good. People were drinking beer and lapping it up,” he said.

Now, it’s whiskey.

“I’ve got nine whiskeys out. It’s hard enough for people to figure out which one of mine is which, and I’ve got about 12 more I want to bottle up. I just can’t help myself. The last thing I want to do is make the same thing all the time. With whiskey, like we did with beer, we are having so much fun, and more or less, we are really rolling,” he said.

Moylan’s Distilling is small, doing a couple hundred cases a year.

“We’re real micro,” he said, “which allows us to have the freedom that we want. But we do need to sell more stuff. There’s no doubt about that. We need to get our sales act together. That’s one of the things I’m going to concentrate on. Right now, I’m still in the process of breaking down Moylan’s (Brewery) and trying to sell off the equipment. And unfortunately, the beer-brewing equipment market is a saturated market right now, with a lot of places closing.”

But for every door that closes, another one opens up. And right now, Moylan is basking in the glow of being a Grand National Champion, something that is sure to up the interest in his most recent venture. Moylan’s Brewery might have closed down, but Moylan’s Distilling is going stronger than ever, proving that the alcohol industry is not for the squeamish.

Go to moylansdistilling.com.

Jeff Burkhart is the author of “Twenty Years Behind Bars: The Spirited Adventures of a Real Bartender, Vol. I and II,” the host of the Barfly Podcast on iTunes (as seen in the NY Times) and an award-winning bartender at a local restaurant. Follow him at jeffburkhart.net and contact him at jeffbarflyIJ@outlook.com