Our Founders

When our family first came to America in the late 1800s, we were granted a farm parcel in Northern Wisconsin. Upon arriving in Shawano County, “Frederik” Maas looked around, realized he was in bear country, and climbed a tree to catch some shut-eye. Upon rising, he got to work building a home on the site where the Maas family would farm cattle, corn, alfalfa, and tap maple trees for decades to come. We still own the farm today.

Soon, the farm wasn’t large enough to support all the Maas' sons, so my great-grandfather JW left the farm to enter the local lumber industry while moonlighting tech classes. Upon completing his engineering degree, he left his logging days (and one of his legs) behind and never looked back.

My grandfather, JW’s son Duane Maas, reaped the benefits of JW’s education with the opportunity to seek one for himself. Duane was drafted, left school to serve in the Air Force, and ended up returning to the University of Wisconsin-Madison to complete his engineering degree. He then took a job working for Shell Petrochemical, married my grandmother Sonja, and had three sons, including my father Tom in 1956. They moved around a lot until Duane made a name for himself in a bridge game that wound up getting him the role of plant manager at Fleischmann’s Distillery. At this point, the immigration of the Maas family came full circle, as Duane began celebrating his family’s history of lumber and agriculture by filling barrels of bourbon in Owensboro, Kentucky. This facility, like many others built by him (16 distilleries in 9 countries) is still operating today, having changed hands many times through the mid-1900s.

My father, Tom, also entered the spirits industry and began working at a distributor in Chicago before spending time in Lynchburg, TN and Bardstown, KY. Eventually, he transitioned from sales to marketing and began building brands around the barrels filled by his father. I have had the opportunity to share a similar path as, when my father retired from Jim Beam in the early 2000s to start a bottling plant with his father, I had the pleasure of helping assemble on weekends home from college.

Tom’s Magnum Opus brought us all together and we worked as a team until we lost Duane in 2016. He died with his boots on. He worked until he couldn’t walk and was able to consult on the beginning of our project here at the Dancing Goat. Many great friends he had mentored along the way came out of the woodwork to help us complete the project we began when he was still healthy.

The Dancing Goat Distillery is a gift from my father, meant to honor the legacy of his father. One day, I will give it to my daughters as a gift to honor my father. If I am lucky, they may do the same. We are here to honor the craftsmanship and intentionality of spirits making by connecting with others through education. We welcome all others to join us as students in celebration.

Cheers,
Nick Brady Maas