Daniel Stewart
Daniel R. Stewart is a Tallahassee native who was born in January of 1985. Stewart eventually left Florida for Texas, where he attended Baylor University and became immersed in a region developing its own distinctive whiskey culture. Stewart is a man whose interests range well beyond whiskey: he has kept bees, baked sourdough bread, experimented with fermentation, and developed into a serious student of the history and science of distillation.
Stewart is married to writer Haley Stewart, and the couple have four children. During their years in Waco, Texas, Daniel pursued interests that blended naturally with fermentation and distilling, while Haley developed a career as an author and speaker. Daniel also began writing about whiskey and spirits under the name Slowdrams, eventually contributing to publications devoted to distilling as well as broader cultural subjects. The combination of practical production work and serious writing would become an important feature of his career: Stewart did not simply learn how to operate distilling equipment; he studied why whiskey develops the aromas, flavors, and textures that it does.
His professional entry into distilling came in Texas around 2019. Stewart later recalled that part of his training at his new distillery job involved tasting and learning about different spirits. One encounter proved especially important. An older Scotch whisky carried aromas that reminded him vividly of an evening years earlier with his young son in their Texas garden. The experience pushed Stewart deeper into studying how still shape, grain, yeast, climate, barrels, and other variables can produce the chemical compounds responsible for flavor and aroma. That distillery was Balcones Distilling in Waco, one of the most prominent producers to emerge from the modern Texas whiskey movement. Stewart worked there as a distiller, gaining experience at a company known particularly for American single malt and other unconventional whiskies. Balcones provided something difficult to duplicate at a newly established craft operation: exposure to whiskey production on a comparatively substantial scale and to a distillery already recognized nationally for experimenting with grain, maturation, and the effects of the Texas climate. By 2022, Stewart had accumulated roughly three years of professional distilling experience there, in addition to the extensive independent study that was becoming visible through his Slowdrams writing.
The opportunity to return to his hometown came through Ology. The company had begun in June 2017 when Nick Walker, Paul Woodward, and Brian Clark established Ology Brewing in Tallahassee. Its identity was built around experimentation and science, hence, the name. Ology expanded into distilling in 2020, initially allowing its taprooms to broaden their beverage programs beyond beer. Stewart joined the company in 2022 and eventually became its head distiller, bringing his Balcones experience back to Florida.
Whiskey became an important part of Stewart’s work at Ology, although the distillery also produces rum, gin, vodka, liqueurs, and other spirits. Ology’s commercial whiskey lineup has included Small Batch Bourbon and Small Batch Rye. These bottlings are sourced and blended rather than distilled entirely at Ology, and the company is unusually direct about that distinction. Its bourbon is a carefully selected small-batch blend bottled at 47 percent alcohol by volume, while its rye is bottled at 51 percent. Blending itself became another part of Stewart’s work, requiring barrels to be evaluated individually and combined so that their strongest characteristics complemented one another.
More significant for Ology’s future as a whiskey producer is the spirit being made inside its own distillery. Stewart has focused on single-malt whiskey production, applying the knowledge accumulated at Balcones to a distinctly different environment in North Florida. Ology ferments its own single malt and matures whiskey under Florida conditions, where heat creates a much different aging environment from Scotland and even from many traditional American whiskey regions. By 2024, Tallahassee tourism officials were already describing Ology’s single malt as meticulously fermented whiskey influenced by Florida’s tropical climate.
Stewart approaches maturation as a major component of whiskey production rather than simply a waiting period. His professional writing has examined barrel size, American oak, secondary maturation in wine and sherry casks, yeast selection, and other subjects directly related to the construction of whiskey flavor. He has explained that oak contributes such familiar bourbon characteristics as vanilla and cinnamon, but his interest extends into how variations in oak species, barrel history, climate, and finishing casks alter the final spirit. That intellectual curiosity has made his work at Ology an extension of the same questions that first captured his attention in Texas.
Experimentation remains central to the distillery. At Ology’s Power Mill production facility, Stewart has access to a small one-gallon still that is regularly used for trials, allowing ideas to be tested before they are moved toward commercial production. By 2025, Ology was producing rye whiskey and small-batch bourbon while Stewart was developing additional whiskey expressions. The company’s spirits had also moved beyond its own Tallahassee and Tampa taprooms into Florida retail distribution, including major chains.
For Stewart, whiskey has become both occupation and subject of study. What began with professional training in Texas developed into years of examining fermentation, stills, oak, maturation, and sensory chemistry, first at Balcones and later at Ology. His career now connects two very different whiskey environments—the intense maturation conditions of Texas and the warm, humid climate of Florida. At Ology, the sourced bourbon and rye provide whiskey for the present, while Stewart’s own single-malt production represents something more important for the future: whiskey conceived, fermented, distilled, and matured in Tallahassee under the direction of a distiller whose experience began well before he arrived there.
Sources:
Tallahassee Magazine, “In Good Spirits”, Kelley Marcellus, April 28, 2025, tallahasseemagazine.com
Plough, “The Essence of Everything”, Daniel Stewart, August 14, 2024, plough.com
Spirits & Distilling, “American Oak Varies by Region. Does It Matter to Your Whiskey?” Daniel Stewart, November 15, 2023, spiritsanddistilling.com
Slowdrams, “About (Daniel Stewart)”, slowdrams.com
Ology Brewing and Distilling official website, ologybrewing.com
Visit Tallahassee, “The Official 2024 Guide to Tallahassee”, 2024, visittallahassee.com
Contributed by Tracy McLemore, Fairview, Tennessee
