UNION - April is whiskey-making month over at Sweetgrass Farm Winery and Distillery and you know what that means for our Cheap Dates aficiandos: it's free, it's fun and c'mon, it's whiskey! (Anyone who has been reading my columns knows I consider it a basic food group. See my last story: What it’s like to sip a $150 glass of pre-Prohibition whiskey.

Owners Keith and Constance Bodine have been making whiskey commercially for the last two years.

"We don't even have our retail operations set up for the season yet, but we're inviting people to come see what's going on with our whiskey production," said Constance. "They can see the mash, smell it and sample it. Our whiskies are distilled twice. So on April 10, we're going to have the stripping run, which is like the rough cut and the final run on April 17, which is the spirit run. Once it comes out of the still, it goes right to the barrel for eight years."

Folks will be able to learn what goes into distilling whiskey and the difference between the stripping run which according to Constance, "has a wonderfully warm, bready aroma" after they pull off all the sugars from the fermented barley mash and the spirit run, "which is distilled down again, increasing the alcoholic content in order to age it for so long in th barrel."

The April 10 stripping run and the April 17 spirit run is open to the public from noon to 4 p.m. Show up at the tasting room.

"It's going to be a pretty casual event," she said. "We'll just be talking about how whiskey is made and people can talk about their favorite whiskies."

Bring a date, bring a buddy and get ready to enjoy the monster mash.

Cheap Dates is a series dedicated to scrounging the most amount of fun out of the Midcoast on the fewest dollars.

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com