by bourbonv » Tue Sep 12, 2006 7:24 pm
I had arranged with Chris Morris to take a tour of the Brown-Forman Distillery in Shively. For decades this was known as the Early Times Distillery but Brown-Forman has changed the name to reflect the fact that Old Forester is also being made at this location now. The tour was to originaly have been with Mike, JDKnaebel and his wife Kirsten, Brenda, Chuckmick and Gayle Hack. Mike canceled his trip to Kentucky and did not make it and JD has had a career change, which added misfortune to his Chuckmick who works at his place of employment so They all canceled as well. This left just Brenda, Gayle and myself to take the tour with Chris Morris as guide.
Chris met us at the gate and signed us in with the guard. We then went to the main distillery building. This distillery was built in 1935 and started life as Kentucky Distillers Corperation making Pride of Jefferson County and Kentucky Dew. Brown-Forman bought the distillery in the early 50's and started making Early Times there. In the 1980's they closed their downtown distillery and moved production of Old Forester to the Early Times distillery, thus bringing about the name change over a decade later. Nothing changes quickly at Brown-Forman and a lot of debate takes place on anything including name changes.
It was a rainy afternoon and we were happy to get in the building. There are some nice displays of the products made there with a reproduction of a 19th century Early Times advertising piece, but this is a working distillery without a lot of tourist orientated displays and hoopla. We were given a very informative brochure on making bourbon and a nice pen by on of the ladies in the office. Unfortunately her name escapes me, but she was very gracious and friendly while we talked in the lobby.
Chris started the tour with the grain receiving room. This meant we trekked out into a drizzle for a few yards and into the small office. As luck would have it they were receiving a load of corn and we watched as the employee checked it under ultra-violet light and Chris discussed all of the quality control checks they make on the grain. 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!
They were also unloading some corn from another truck as we watched so the next stop was the grain cleaning machine, shaking the corn through a screen to remove bits of cob or pebbles that might be in the grain. From there we went to the mill room. Most distilleries discuss hammer mills or roller mills and claim the other type will scorch the grain. Brown-Forman uses neither. They have what Chris described as a sieve mill with two tubular sieves turning in opposite direction, one inside of the other, to grind the grain. This system was designed to turn limestone into powdered lime so Chris explained that this leaves no chance of over heating and scorching of the grain. Plus it gives them a great variety from very course to very fine when milling the grain into meal. The last line of defense in quality control of the grain before they are milled are a set of huge magnets that remove any metal pieces that might have gotten through the cleaning or broken off from the machinery conveying the grain to the mills. This is very important because you do not want iron in you whiskey.
We then started the trek up, much to Brenda's dismay, many flights of stairs, as Chris literaly gave us a tour from top to bottom of the distillery. The next level up took us to the cookers. They have three mash cookers of a little over 10,000 gallons each. It takes all three of these cookers to fill a single 40,000 gallon fermenter. The distillery makes about 650 barrels of whiskey a day. They make Early Times, Old Forester and do contract distilling for a couple of other companies as well. They run seven days a week but do shut down periodically for cleaning and maintenance. Chris describes the distillery as an old battleship with plenty of cleansing and painting needed to be done all year round. They were cleaning the cookers while we were there and we got to watch the progress on the computer screens. Computers have led to some nice air conditioned offices in the distillery - places that never saw air conditioning before the installation of computers!
After leaving the cookers we went up to the grain bins and Chris explained the sledge hammer laying next to the bins as necessary to keep grain from sticking to the side of the bin when the weather is damp like today. a few slugs on the side with the sledge hammer knocks loose meal sticking to the side of the bin. We then looked at the fermenter room. They have 12 fermenters of about 42,000 gallon capacity with closed tops and the ability to draw off the CO2 for storage to be sold when the market makes it profitable to do so. I am sure this also helps out with local pollution control laws as well. We were able to see fermentation in all stages of completion, from a newly cooked mash to one a couple of days old to one ready to be emptied into the beer well.
We caught a brief glimpse of the two column stills and the tail boxes on our way up to the top level of the distillery. The distillery uses thumpers so there is only the need for two tail boxes since the alcohol is not condensed between distillations. One of the columns is is more narrow than the other and Chris explained that the more narrow still is the Old Forester still whereas the wider column is used for Early Times. I am not sure which still is used for their contract distilling. I will have to ask Chris the next time I see him. On the way to the top we were able to see the grounds outside the distillery and they were impressive views. I always think of Stitzel-Weller as having an air of the quad at a small college with well manicured lawns and lots of trees. This distillery has some of that same air, but it is more park like. It is quite attractive with twin lines of oak trees running off into the distance toward the city sky line. Unfortunately with the rain and a visabilty of only 1.5 miles, the sky line escaped us today.
Once to the top of the distillery we came to two important places in the process of bourbon distilling. The first we visited was the yeast room with an office for starting yeast cultures. Yeast cultures were seen from a single teast tube to a small flask to a larger bottle sitting on the shelves in the lab. Just out side of the lab was a small dona tub, then 2 larger dona tubs and finally 8 large cookers for the yeast to go into the mash. The next important place was the top of the column stills and beer pre-cooker. Chris explained that the beer has to be preheated before going into the still or else it changes the flavor of the whiskey. He stated that as little as a 5 degree change in this temperature can change the flavor of the distillate. The beer then enters the top of the column and distillation begins. The vapors also return to the top of the distillery from the thumper to begin their condensation on the way back down to the tail boxes. On a more sobering point, Chris also pointed out the skylights at the top of the tower. These are designed so that if there is ever an explosion the force will blow upward, blowing the skylights away and saving the structure of the building. Distilling can be a dangerous business and that is one reason there are so many reminders of saftey procedures posted around the distillery. There were many places with ear plugs available to the workers before they enter an exceptionally loud area. No smoking signs are everywhere and the employees seemed to take all of this seriously. They do not want another disaster like the Heaven Hill fire in Shively. Heaven Hill was really lucky in that nobody was killed, but there have been many distilleries in the past that were not so lucky with their fires.
We then went down the stairs (Brenda convincing Chris to let me take her down the elevator) and into a quality control room to check some samples of white dog. We compared Early Times white dogs (one of my favorite white dogs) with a bourbon made on contract and a corn whiskey made on contract. They were quite nice products. They make quality whiskey there for themselves as well as others.
We then tromped out into the rain to visit the cistern room. They were filling barrels of Early Times Kentucky Whiskey. The used barrels were quite evident, but Chris explained that they had all been examined for leaks, worm holes and other problems, so only the best of the used cooperage is re-used. The rest, I guess, go to Scotland. They had four lines working with a single person working the automated conveyors feeding the lines with barrels, filling the barrels, placing the bung, stamping the government head and sending them out to the truck to be warehoused. In the cistern room itself there were four huge tanks sitting on their scales. Each tank hold one day's production from the distillery.
Back out into the rain and to the lobby. We then piled into vehicles to drive over to the warehouses. The barrels being filled in the cistern room beat us there and the barrels were being loaded using a conveyor system that took them up the outside of the building to their proper level. Inside of the warehouse, we saw Early Times Bourbon, Early Times Kentucky Whiskey and Old Forester all being stored side by side. The warehouses are brick and concrete with a sprinkler system and lots of fire doors. They are cycled with heat in the winter - the whiskey heated up to 70 degrees before being allowed to cool. Chris states that this makes for a larger angel's share, but a quicker maturation of the whiskey.
Our tour ended with the warehouses. It had already been over an hour and a half of tour. This caught me by suprise because it did not seem that long. We are going to have to go back to see some other points of interest such as the prototype stills for Woodford. The gates were already closed when we got to them and Chris headeed back to the office downtown. I gave Brenda and Gayle the distillery tour of Shively. I have done this before for John Lipman and if you want to know more about this tour, see his website. He has anexcellent description of the tour there. I will note here though that some things have changed. They tore down the distillery building at Glenco and the iron clad warehouses at Hill and Hill and all but one of the warehouses at Yellowstone.
Last edited by
bourbonv on Wed Sep 13, 2006 9:43 am, edited 1 time in total.
Mike Veach
"Our people live almost exclusively on whiskey" - E H Taylor, Jr. 25 April 1873