Meet Murf the Surf: The Still With a Past
Not every piece of distilling equipment starts its life in a distillery.
Ours certainly didn't.
Meet Murf the Surf, one of the stills we've been using at Grove & Grain for the past couple of years. Long before it became part of our distilling operation, this stainless-steel workhorse had a very different job:
Making soup in a Florida federal prison.
Yes, really.
From Prison Kitchen to Florida Distillery
Murf began life as a large industrial steam kettle, built to cook for a lot of people at once. Eventually, its days in the prison kitchen came to an end—and years later, we saw something entirely different in it.
A still.
The basic idea wasn't as far-fetched as it might sound. A heavy-duty kettle built to handle heat could be repurposed and modified for an entirely different kind of production.
So that's exactly what we did.
The former soup kettle was converted into functional distilling equipment, including the addition of a copper vapor path, and put back to work.
Only this time, there wasn't any soup involved.
Why “Murf the Surf”?
That's where another piece of Florida history enters the story.
We named the still Murf the Surf, a play on the nickname of Jack Roland “Murph the Surf” Murphy.
Murphy gained national notoriety for his role in the 1964 theft of the Star of India sapphire and other gems from New York's American Museum of Natural History. His nickname followed him through years of national media attention.
His story later became much darker. Murphy was convicted of murder in Florida in 1969 and received a life sentence. The following year, another conviction resulted in a second life sentence plus 20 years.
And here's the connection that gave our still its name:
Murphy spent years incarcerated at Florida State Prison and Raiford. Murphy later recalled spending nearly nine years at Florida State Prison and another five years at Raiford.
So when an old prison soup kettle from the same prison system ended up making spirits at a Florida craft distillery, the nickname was hard to resist.
Murf the Surf was born.
If It Looks a Little Unusual, That's Because It Is
When most people picture a craft distillery, they imagine a gleaming copper still built specifically for making spirits.
Murf doesn't exactly fit that picture.
That's part of what we love about it.
It's a repurposed piece of heavy-duty equipment with an unusual past that we've given an entirely different future. And over the past few years, it has become a genuine part of how we've built Grove & Grain.
There's something fitting about that.
We're restoring an old building in Downtown Brooksville rather than building something new. Our spirits tell stories about Florida places and people that came before us. And even some of the equipment we use has already lived another life.
Around here, we have a thing for old things with good stories.
Murf certainly qualifies.
So the next time you have a glass of Grove & Grain, remember: some of the equipment behind that spirit has a story that's almost as interesting as what's inside the bottle.
And Then Murf Went Electric
Murf's transformation didn't end there.
We originally ran the still using propane, but in 2025, we decided it was time for another upgrade and converted Murf to electric heat.
That meant getting back inside an already-repurposed piece of equipment, rewiring controls, making modifications, testing everything—and eventually getting our still back up and running.
Prison soup kettle. Propane-fired still. Electric still.
Murf has had quite a few lives.
And it's still part of the Grove & Grain story today.
We seem to have a thing for old things with good stories—historic buildings, forgotten pieces of Florida history, and apparently even old soup kettles.
We wouldn't have it any other way.
Old Florida, Rediscovered.
Drink Like a Floridian!
