Until this summer, when I stopped by Sickman’s Mill to meet up with Joe Devoy, it had been more than 30 years since I had seen this place. Times surely have changed since I was a kid and spent summers wading and tubing down the Pequea Creek. My visit introduced me to an outdoor bar, a mill in great shape, and the taste sensation, Jimmy Juice.

Lancastrians may recognize Joe as the founder and former owner of Tellus360, an endeavor that started as an Irish furniture import store in 2010. The downtown space morphed into an entertainment complex that is still rocking today. Joe stepped away from Tellus360 in 2021.

On a rainy, “miserable day for tubing” at the mill, Joe and I sat at the outdoor bar overlooking the creek. The weather gave Joe – with his dog Maggie at his side – time to go over all the developments that have taken place since he and his wife, Dana Paparo, purchased Sickman’s Mill in 2020.

“It was like an accident,” says Joe, in his still-thick Irish accent. A real estate agent mentioned the mill to Joe, and he shelved the fact that it had been for sale for almost a year. Eventually, he mentioned the property to Dana; she had fond childhood memories of the mill and tubing on the creek. “Both of us came down and had a look. It was an easy place to fall in love with,” he recalls. The couple moved into a circa-1960s A-frame on the 12-acre property and started the transformation by building the bar where we sit. Called Jimmy’s Place, it’s named after Joe’s previous goldendoodle.

He then started to “clean out the mill” and by the second summer, Sickman’s Mill had a distillery, returning to its initial purpose when constructed in 1792. “We can date back the first mill on the property to 1752,” adds Joe, who has adorned the inside of the current mill – whose second floor is now a bar and live music setting – with old photos and original artifacts. The entire property is now a gathering spot. The bar is a bustling place. Mill vans shuttle tubers back to the property after floating downstream to a pickup point near Martic Forge. “People come from all over, including different countries, to experience this beautiful stretch of creek. It’s a nice hour-and-a-half stretch of water,” he says of the tubing enterprise that opens around Memorial Day and closes Labor Day.

But something at the bar is making an even bigger splash.

Jimmy Juice

Jimmy’s Place is a great spot for a refreshing beverage, and this is where Zach Krause enters the story. Actually, Zach and Joe go back more than 15 years. Zach, who frequented Tellus360, is now the managing director of Horse Hollow Distillery. After meeting with Joe, I gave Zach a call to get all the juicy – pun intended – details.

It turns out, like me, Zach grew up in Lancaster’s West End. He attended Sacred Heart and graduated from Millersville with a degree in international business. However, beverages were always an interest. His grandfather gifted Zach with his first homebrew kit. He visited Germany when he was 18, a trip he calls “a life-changing experience as far as exposure to fine beverages and beverage culture” is concerned. He ran a brewery supply shop while attending college and eventually started teaching weekend classes on how to create beer, wine, cider and kombucha.

After college, the world of international engineering engaged him for the next decade. All this time he and Joe dreamed of ways to launch a brewery or distillery.

“Joe gave me a tour of the mill shortly after he bought it, and we realized it was perfect for our passions and our dreams,” says Zach. Horse Hollow Distillery was born. The first product to materialize from the dream was Jimmy Juice, namely the classic orange fizzy flavor infused with vodka (8%). Although the drink’s groundswell of popularity – now found in over 300 PA locations and with New York distribution in place as of June – is organic and fan-driven, this beverage was no accident. In fact, the creation was a meticulous process of trial and error that relied upon customer feedback at Jimmy’s Place.

“Joe and I started working on cocktails at Tellus back in 2015, trying to come up with things to make his bartenders’ lives easier,” Zach recalls. Following up on a drink request by a regular at Jimmy’s Place, the juice was eventually deemed worthy and became a staple. “Jimmy Juice was born from behind the bar at Sickman’s Mill,” notes Zach. The bar served early variations, and Zach and Joe soaked up all the feedback – from levels of carbonation to layers of sweetness. “We started working on a recipe that could be manufactured. There’s a big difference between a beverage from behind the bar and a beverage that is manufactured for distribution. We knew this was it, this delicious beverage called Jimmy Juice. If we wanted to start a distillery, this is the beverage.”

The result, says Zach, is a top-shelf, premium cocktail in a can. It is not a seltzer. It is not watered down. There are no fake sugars, no flavor powders, and each of the now six flavors is made with real juice and vodka (one is spiked with tequila).

“The community loved this beverage. And they didn’t want to just drink it here. They wanted to take it home,” Zach continues. Canning began at the mill a few years ago with an output of 120 cases per run. Now a mobile canning business pumps out 120 cases per hour. The growth seemed to happen almost overnight. I recall hearing about Jimmy Juice, then I started to see it at festivals and now it is one of the biggest sellers at Penn Medicine Park – outselling Miller Lite. “People love local beverages. They love their local breweries, and people were just itching for an alternative to beer as market trends find more people moving toward can cocktails from beer,” Zach notes. “The more we looked, the more we analyzed the numbers, the more we realized it is everyone who likes Jimmy Juice – from the 23-year-old Taylor Swift fan to the 68-year-old who spent his whole life welding.”

Joe and Zach experimented with different flavors and quickly developed a full product portfolio. The newest flavor is Little Jim, which is a lower ABV, “easy drinking” version of the original Jimmy Juice. Ten percent of Little Jim sales supports the Long’s Park Amphitheater Foundation’s fund drive for a new roof. The second newest flavor, Pink Flamingo, has quickly become the brands second-most-popular flavor (behind the original orange).

Both Joe and Zach dropped the phrase “at capacity” several times during our conversations. The current facility, comprised of six stainless-steel vessels inside the mill, is pumping out 45,000 cans of the six Jimmy Juice flavors every 10 to 14 days. Those cases begin to disappear immediately. It is clearly time to expand.

The Future is Now

A new, state-of-the-art production facility will go online by the time this story is published. Occupying a former maintenance building on South Duke Street in Millersville, the space was rebuilt solely for the production of Jimmy Juice. “At the new facility we will be able to do 400,000 to 450,000 cans every 10 days or so,” says Zach. “In terms of innovation, this is a premiere production facility. I’ve really given it everything I’ve got.”

Sitting on three acres, the 11,000-square-foot space underwent a six-month renovation by what Zach calls a crew of local “legends and true trade professionals” who installed all new electrical, water, HVAC systems and more. Inside, all the equipment comes from U.S. suppliers, and for the actual production vessels, Zach tapped Blichmann Engineering from Indiana. “They have been an innovation leader in homebrewing and are associated with the best tech and equipment,” says Zach of Blichmann, who allowed him to create custom modifications to Jimmy Juice equipment.

Back beside the Pequea Creek, Joe and I walk into the bustling ground level of the mill as workers prep for canning. This will all be silent in a few weeks, but it will not remain unused for long. “Distilling has always been a dream, I suppose,” says Joe, as Maggie moves to my side. I reach down and give her a pat on the head. “Maggie’s our new dog, and we are playing around with some gins and whiskies and at some stage there may be something named after her,” Joe remarks.

Joe’s Irish heritage must lead to a whisky, right? He likes the idea of an Irish-style whisky using Lancaster County-sourced ingredients. Personally, Zach is a bourbon drinker, but he likes the idea of crafting creative gins.

“We will continue to be innovative and do things our way, in a unique way,” says Zach. “I have some ideas deep inside my head, but my main focus is the new facility. I know spirits are on the horizon.”

Mill History Abridged

Tucked just off Sand Hill Road in Conestoga Township, the Sickman’s Mill story begins in 1792, when Christian Shenk built the stone-and-brick structure as a distillery. By 1842, the party ended when Jacob Good bought the mill from Shenk’s son. Renamed the Horse Hollow Flour Mill, the building produced flour and feed for the region – something Joe is familiar with.

“My granddad and great granddad were mill workers, so my dad grew up in a mill house right beside the local mill in Thomastown, County Kilkenny [Ireland],” Joe recalls. “When I first came to the mill here it felt like I was going full circle.”

The mill changed hands a few more times before a fire in 1862 tried to write the final chapter. But William and Daniel Good stepped in to rebuild and even expanded the place, giving the mill a few more spins of the wheel. Fred Sickman took ownership in the early 1900s, and his son Warren would become the last to run it as a true working mill.

In 1967, a new era began when Michael Z. and Mary Lou Gress saw tourism potential in the old mill. They added a gift shop, a snack stand and offered boat rides and tours on the water. Erik and Trina Armstrong took over in 2010, keeping the tubing tradition alive and adding a wedding venue. The property has also stood as an antiques mall, a museum and a haunted attraction during the Halloween season.

“The previous owners did an amazing job keeping up with it and making sure it wasn’t falling apart,” says Joe.

My wife and I had one of our first dates along this majestic stretch of water, the summer sun peeking through the wood-lined waterway as we swam. And I am sure ours is only one of a million memories forever etched in the minds of those who have been touched by the beauty and adventure of the Pequea Creek.

Joe and Dana have made sure Sickman’s Mill will provide memories for generations to come, and as the popularity of Jimmy Juice expands, Zach will surely put the Pequea Creek on the world map.

671 Sand Hill Rd., Pequea
Sickmansmill.com and Drinkjimmyjuice.com