2025 Spring Homeland | Rain Makes Corn, Corn Makes Whiskey

Father/son team run Nebraska distillery, turning out 10,000 gallons a year 

In a state known for growing corn, it’s only natural that someone is using it to make whiskey. 

That would be Todd Roe and his dad, Bill Roe, of Lazy RW Distillery in Moorefield, Neb. 

 
It all started when Bill and wife Susan returned from vacation in Branson, Missouri, where they had visited a distillery.  

As he told Todd about it, Todd remarked, “wouldn’t it be fun if we did it? And the plan was set.”  

Together, in Bill’s shop, Todd did some welding on a two-gallon pressure cooker, adding a column. They took old wine and made brandy, and thought to themselves, “we can get better at this.” 

Todd did lots of research. 

“I’ve always been a book nerd,” he said. “I just started studying and studying everything whiskey.” 

Family tradition played into the father/son team’s decision to make alcohol. 

Bill had the journals of his great-great uncle, Karl, who had run a still on his dairy farm on the Niobrara River near Valentine, Neb. 

They were “old family recipes that we fine-tuned and turned them into our own thing,” Todd said. 

The two distilled whiskey for a couple of years, giving it away to their friends. “It started looking like we had a garage sale at Dad’s house every weekend,” Todd joked, with their buddies coming to get whiskey. 

In August of 2015, they got their license and started making it for sale. 

For the first two years, it was available at the distillery only. 

But the Lazy RW whiskey soon caught the attention of the alcohol distributors in North Platte, then Grand Island, and then Omaha. It wasn’t long and they had contracts with all three distributors.  

“We went from being the most remote distillery in the state,” he said, “to where we compete every month for producing the most gallons.” They are ranked first or second in Nebraska each month, on the number of gallons they produce. 

Lazy RW has sixteen different flavors of whiskey: everything from cinnamon to peach, lemon-lime, strawberry lemon, cranberry lime, and more. The most popular are the two originals: lemon and cinnamon.  

“It’s not the easiest thing in the world to make whiskey unless your wife likes it,” he joked. His wife, Lisa, prefers the lemon and the strawberry-lemon. And the niche clientele for Lazy RW Distillery? Females who are 25-65 years old. “That’s who buys it and drinks it,” Todd said.  

They also make a Reserve, an aged whiskey, and, of course, the Frontier Straight, an unaged whiskey. The Frontier Straight is available for sale only at the distillery.  

When the men started, they didn’t want to go into a lot of debt.  

“Dad and I took a different approach to our distillery,” Todd said. “We didn’t want to break the bank or take out loans.” They built nearly all of their own equipment, from the stills to the control boxes.  

They bought an eight-gallon still, but when they outgrew it, Todd made their own 150-gallon still. 

With an engineering degree and a curiosity to learn, he made the control boxes as well.  

“I bought one that cost me $1,200. Now I’ve built probably a dozen of them and I don’t have over $200 in them, including solid state relays and computer interfaces. 

“With my fascination with science, I had a very good understanding of what needed to happen. I’m one of those types of people, and my dad is, too, that if you show me something, I can come up with a way to do it myself. This is the information age, and you can get access to about anything.” 

He’s not afraid to try new things, either. “Ninety-nine point five percent of it is having the courage to fail.”  

The distillery is housed in the old elementary school in Moorefield. Todd and Bill remodeled, rewired, and replumbed it, but left the schoolhouse look. People still stop by to visit the school they attended. Todd laughs at the irony of producing spirits in a school building. “I always wanted to be able to make whiskey at school.”  

He didn’t quit his “real job” when he and Bill opened the distillery. He works remotely as an engineer for a wood products firm. He likes to be busy; in addition to engineering and the distillery, he and two business partners do construction and have a herd of cattle. 

“My wife asks, ‘when are we going on vacation?’ And I say, ‘whenever you get yourself a boyfriend because I can’t go,'” he laughs. “My idea of working is constantly having something going on.”  

Moorefield is 47 miles southeast of North Platte and 27 miles south of Brady and has a population of 17 people. “They say 22, but I’ll argue that any day,” Todd quips.   

It’s the most remote of the eight active distilleries in the state. The other distilleries have bars and eateries and are located in more populated areas, “which is a huge part of what makes them work,” Todd said. Lazy RW Distillery doesn’t have those forms of income. “I could warm you up a Hot Pocket (at the distillery) if you’re hungry,” he joked, “but we don’t have those turn-around sales.”  

But the men have done well; the whiskey is for sale in 315 retail locations across the state. They produce more than 10,000 gallons annually.   

The distillery offers the “Field to Bottle” program. People can bring in two five-gallon buckets of field corn and have it made into their own whiskey, with a custom label. Two five-gallon buckets produce about five cases (or twelve gallons) of whiskey; if the customer doesn’t want that much, a half-batch can be made.  

Todd and Lisa have four children: sons Eric, TJ and Tyler (better known as Ty Bug) and daughter Morgan, plus two grandchildren.  

Todd wants to leave the distillery to them someday, something special he can give them.  

“I want something to give to my boys and my daughter,” he said. “Not necessarily riches, but something from dad. I want to create something they can say, wow, thank you.”  

The business allows him to spend time with his dad and his kids and provide extra income.  

“I get to hang out with my old man every day,” he said. “He’s more like my best friend than my father. We get to hang out, I get to be back home, and I was able to raise my kids here, how I was raised. I get to hopefully build something they can have some day.”