Lucky Bucket Brewery and Cut Spike Distillery: La Vista, Nebraska

This post is part of our Omaha Beer Week series. Please check out our page to learn more about breweries in the 402! ShearonSuds.com/omahabeerweek

The Lucky Bucket began in 2008. At the time, management was looking to make it into a combined brewery and distillery. Unfortunately, Nebraska laws prohibited the distillation of spirits. In the meantime, while they were waiting for the state legislature to get to work, they brewed beer instead. There was a second law which prohibited the distillation of spirits under the same roof as a brewery. Similar to my Brickway post on this blog, they needed to separate the brewing and distilling sides of the building. They too elected for a chain-link fence between the two spaces, and it remains legal to this day. The fence separates the work of the Lucky Bucket Brewing Company and the Cut Spike Distillery.

The brewery now distributes to Nebraska, parts of Iowa, Kansas, North and South Dakota, Oklahoma, and Tennessee. Lucky Bucket has traveled to San Francisco to compete in the World Spirits Competition, where their single malt whiskey won a double gold medal.

This tour was a fairly standard tour, but the distillery created a unique twist. The $3 tour includes a full pour of one of their beers, and the tour concludes with a sample of the vodka. This vodka is easy drinking. They distill their vodka 23 times. It may have even been 26. It’s unbelievable. This is a great drink from a very surprising location. I would highly recommend trying their hard drinks.