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Bad news Linn. They are nor preedicting snow for Saturday night. They are still unsure as to the severity, but 50 miles south for the track could leave Kentucky with several inches of snow. The mountains will be worst.
Mike Veach

As much as I envy those of you attending the event Saturday, I have recent memory of driving through the southern Indiana/Louisville pre-Christmas snowstorm last month. No fun, and a sense of real danger among all the vehicles under others' control (or lack of it) on the highway.
Please, all drive safely!

I agree Tim, living in the NE as well I know how it can get in that kind of weather so please guys and gals, drive safely! Even those of you with one of these!

BTW Linn, found this before, looks pretty cool...

Whoa! Now that's a sweet pickup!

I just picked up a new set of rechargable AA's for the Fuji, and a circular polalizing filter too, so I'm good to go photo wise.

We've got some flurries flying around outside, but nothing on the road. A dusting on the grass is all so far. 50% chance of snow tomorrow for our trip. It's going to be interesting!

ima

OK! We made it to Kentucky fairly easily. Ran into some light snow west of Nitro, West Virginia that persisted to Lexington, Kentucky. Traffic was light and we arrived without incident.

ima

OK here come a series of photos that I will attempt to put into a reasonable sequence. This is getting off to a bad start. I've downsized the pix for web attachments, but several are still to large to be accepted, so we'll have to skip those and just see what fits. Any semblance of logic is now out the door.

The trio of Scottish made Forsyth pot stills is an impressive sight. Master Distiller Chris Morris reveals the uniqueness of the only pot beer still in the world. Since the stills were not running that day we were able to go behind the stills were Chriss would show us where and how the beer still could be recharged with new distiller's beer as the still is running. Now THAT's special!

More Stills!

Woodford Reserve propagates it's own yeast. Master Distiller Chris Morris explains the process.

I assume that the barrels pictured here that you guys sampled was produced at Woodford Reserve. Given that, please relate your various impressions of the uncut, unfiltered pot still whisky. Do they ever plan to bottle and release any of their product that is made exclusively at WR? What was the very young whisky like?

Here's what's left that will fit!

Brewer wrote:I assume that the barrels pictured here that you guys sampled was produced at Woodford Reserve. Given that, please relate your various impressions of the uncut, unfiltered pot still whisky. Do they ever plan to bottle and release any of their product that is made exclusively at WR? What was the very young whisky like?

Bob,

One of the things I found out was that Woodford Reserve is unfiltered in that there is no chill or charcoal filtering. The barrels are dumped into a trough with series of screens and then the bourbon goes through four paper filters about a foot square. This is just to get out all the solid particles.

We did a LOT of tasting. White dog of Woodford Reserve; Early Times, Old Forester, and Jack Daniels, and of course the bottled expressions.

When we compared the Woodford white dog, five weeks young, and the eight year old barrel samples the differences were dramatic. I liked all of them! The amazing thing was the amount of color the five weeks old whiskey had. The Woodford warehouse was designed and built to be cycled. The heating works!

There is so much copper contact with this whiskey and you can easily taste it. I like it when it has matured as in the example of our eight year old sample. I thought this could easily be bottled as a single barrel.

Chris did tell us that there is a bourbon collection in the works at Brown-Forman. Just what it will consist of and what the names will be is still up in the air, but it's something we can all look forward too.

ima

Just spent the day with at the second of three Academies being done this year. What a difference a couple of weeks make with temperatures near 60 and the sun shining. There was a member of this group at the academy and we will see how well JD paid attention, because I talked about and gave the answer to one of the trivia questions. It was actually his second academy and I was suprise that about half the group were repeating the event. One guest was even there for the third time!

I have been doing this for four years now and I learn something new everytime. This time I was pleased to learn that an Irish whiskey maker is using "Bourbon Characteristics" as a descriptor in tasting notes to sell their product aged in bourbon barrels.

Mike Veach

Sorry to take so long posting this. I shot it with one of those $6 cameras, just got the film back (Linn, your photos were great, thanks!).
Anyway, this is definitely the 'money shot' off my roll...
That's Linn wielding the cordless drill and Howie is the catch man...
Sorry I didn't get a shot of them trying to plug the hole...

Well Brendaj you got my 'good side'!

Sorry Howie!

ima