“We thought, ‘New York loves the drink but no one makes one. That’s weird!” Haskell said.

Spoelman, meanwhile, said he was no stranger to home-distilled whiskey.

“I grew up in Kentucky, a state known for its bourbon, but where Prohibition was never repealed,” said Spoelman, referring to the strict US temperance laws that were struck down elsewhere in the United States in 1933.

The bootleg alcohol trade in Kentucky spawned a tradition of home-made spirits — popularly known as “moonshine” because it often was produced secretly in the woods, after nightfall.

Haskell and Spoelman, after deciding to produce their own whiskey, spent six months doing research and testing the results.

The entrepreneurial duo eventually developed a satisfactory product, concocted from a recipe with a distinctive pedigree.

“It’s a recipe similar to the one used in George Washington’s distillery at Mount Vernon,” Haskell boasted.

They undertook their project just as New York was trying to relax its old laws on spirits and encourage the creation of distilleries. The two friends seized the opportunity and obtained a license to operate their business in April 2010.

Haskell and Spoelman started out by installing a few small stills in their New York studio apartment.

A year later, the Brooklyn Navy Yard offered them a lease in the aging brick building that once housed an accounting office for shipyard workers, and later became a garment factory run by Hasidic Jews.