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And the warehouse...I'm really sorry I didn't get a shot of the cool piece of equipment they use to assist with the unloading of the trucks. As we walked up, an empty truck was just pulling away.
Maybe next time...

Great Photographs, Brenda. Thanks for posting them.

I assume the barrels with the whited-out ends on them were used barrels being refilled for Early Times.

Chuck,
You assume correctly. They were filling Early Times Kentucky Style Whiskey in the cistern room. They also had the used barrels (easily noted because of the white covering the old information, as Chuck points out), in the warehouse. Not as many as you may think though. I saw more Early Times bourbon barrels the Kentucky Whiskey barrels. Of course we only entered one floor of the warehouse.

bourbonv wrote:He is quite proud of the robotic system they have for taking grain samples from the truck, allowing the worker to stay in the office (and out of the rain) as a robotic arm is lowered into the truck, the sample taken pretty much the same way as an person with a grain thief would take the sample, but it is then sucked into the tube and deposited in a small bin inside the office. Think of a drive through widow machine in a bank except for grain instead of your deposit!

Mike,

This seems to be an interesting, and efficient way to test the grain delivery. I assume the robot can be moved to retrieve batches for tests from different areas of the truck. I've never heard of any distillery having a process like this to test their corn, or any other grains for that matter. Do you know if anyone does? If not, I wonder why no one would do so.

Bob,
The robotic arm reminds me of the one on the space shuttle - quite long and flexable enough to deploy the sample tool to any part of the truck and a video monitor to allow the operator to view exactly where he is placing it. Brown-Forman has many innovative robotic processes that date back many years. Some of the other distilleries use similar machines to move their barrels around but no one else uses the grain sampler machine. The reason is simple - expense. It is a hefty investment into this type of machine.