Distillery 98 Runs Two Creative Calendars, and Almost Nobody in Santa Rosa Beach Follows Both

Here is the thing about 835 Serenoa Road that most regulars miss: the small-batch distillery known for Sunday oyster shooters and $5 lagers is actually the address for two entirely separate creative programs, run by different combinations of the same handful of local organizations, on schedules that never quite line up. If you've only ever gone for Serenoa Sunday or a Meat + Martinis dinner, you've seen one half of what happens inside that building. The other half has its own audience, its own founders, and its own website, and it rarely mentions the first half at all.

The split is worth untangling, because once you see it, you start noticing how much of Santa Rosa Beach's creative life works this way. Small venues host overlapping but distinct communities, and the connective tissue between them is invisible unless you already know who's behind the flyer.

The Wall That Changes Every Month

The visual art side is called Distilled: An Artist Series, and it's a genuine three-way partnership between the Cultural Arts Alliance of Walton County, Distillery 98, and Emerald Coast Storytellers. Each month, a different local artist takes over the distillery's walls for a full installation, kicked off with a free opening gallery night where the artist talks through their process and the work is available for purchase on the spot.

This year's rotation has included Renee Broxson, whose whimsical, character-driven paintings filled the space through April, and Andi Scurto, whose illustrations and portrait work took over in June alongside a hands-on watercolor workshop. In July, ceramicist Sarah Bumanglag led a Cocktails & Clay session through the Cultural Arts Alliance, guiding guests through building a custom clay planter while sipping a complimentary cocktail, with finished pieces glazed and fired off-site and ready for pickup two to three weeks later. The next opening lands October 1, when Allison Wickey takes the wall for the fall installment.

None of this is incidental programming bolted onto a bar. The Cultural Arts Alliance treats the residency as part of its broader mission to connect Walton County audiences with working artists, and Distillery 98 markets itself explicitly around local art celebrating the heritage of Scenic Highway 30A. The gallery wall changes, but the infrastructure behind it doesn't.

The Same Founders, A Different Flyer

Here's the part that surprises even longtime regulars. Emerald Coast Storytellers, the co-producer of Distilled, also runs its own completely separate literary calendar under its own name, and that calendar does not stay put at Distillery 98. ECS's Open Mic Nights, After-Hours Writing Nights, and Story-Pairing Dinners rotate through a rotating cast of venues that includes Grayton Beer, Palm Folly, Bayou Arts Center, Emerald Coast Theatre Company, and the SOFO Poets Society, in addition to Distillery 98 itself.

The two programs share a founding partner and, some months, a building. They do not share a genre, a format, or an audience. One is a quiet month-long art installation you can wander through any afternoon the distillery is open. The other is a scheduled evening event built around live performance, sign-up sheets, and a themed prompt. Someone who has attended a dozen Distilled opening nights may have never once shown up to an ECS open mic, and vice versa, because nothing on either group's marketing tells you the other exists.

Here's how the fall lineup actually breaks down by producer and location:

Read across that table and the pattern is obvious once it's laid out. Two of the three tracks stay anchored to one address. The third moves constantly, and the address it lands at any given month is close to a coin flip.

What's Actually on the Calendar Right Now

If you're trying to plan around this instead of stumbling into it, here's where things stand heading into fall. Distillery 98 has an After-Hours Writing Night on the books for Thursday, September 24, which is the quieter of ECS's two recurring formats: bring a laptop or a notebook, work alongside other locals, no performance required. Then on October 1, the distillery flips over to gallery mode for Allison Wickey's opening night, running from 6 to 8 p.m., with her work staying up through the month.

Meat + Martinis, the distillery's own recurring dinner series, picks back up October 8 and returns again October 22, November 5, and November 19, each at 6 p.m. That's four separate dinner nights stacked across two months, all under Distillery 98's own name rather than either partner program.

Anyone hoping to catch an ECS Open Mic Night specifically, as opposed to the quieter After-Hours format, should watch Emerald Coast Storytellers' own event calendar directly, since those ticketed nights have moved through Grayton Beer, Palm Folly, and the Emerald Coast Theatre Company in recent months and aren't guaranteed to land back at the distillery on any predictable rhythm.

Why the Split Is Worth Knowing If You Live Here

None of this is a criticism of either program. It's a fair description of how small creative ecosystems work in a town this size. A handful of committed organizers, a handful of venues willing to host them, and a lot of cross-pollination that never quite consolidates into one calendar. The Cultural Arts Alliance of Walton County has folded ECS into its own programming as a partner, which is how a literary group ended up co-producing a visual art residency. But ECS still runs its founding mission on its own terms, moving from room to room across the community rather than settling into a single home base.

For a resident, the practical takeaway is simple: following just one Instagram account or just one venue's calendar means missing at least one entire track of what's happening a few miles from home. The distillery's own site covers Meat + Martinis and the Distilled openings. The Cultural Arts Alliance's calendar covers workshops like Cocktails & Clay. And Emerald Coast Storytellers' own event page is the only reliable way to catch the Open Mic Nights and Story-Pairing Dinners wherever they land that particular month.

Santa Rosa Beach doesn't have a large enough footprint for these programs to need to differentiate themselves loudly. That's exactly why they blur together for anyone who isn't already tracking all three sources. Once you know the split exists, the rest of the fall calendar reads a lot more clearly.

If you're already living this stretch of 30A and want more of the texture behind it, from what's opening to what's rotating through, the team at Emerald Coast Properties keeps close tabs on the neighborhood beyond the transaction. Reach out any time to schedule your complimentary consultation, whether you're weighing a move or just want to talk shop about the coast you already call home.