Back on The Bourbon Trail

 Louisville, KY

Us in front of Big Penny, the 44 ft. still at Old Forester.

Road Trip To Louisville!

Today we did the drive to Louisville, KY to visit the Old Forester Distillery.  We booked our tour over a month ago so we have been looking forward to this for a while.  The drive is about an hour and a half taking the most direct route.  We drove down on the most direct route and drove back through Indiana to get more counties and see more sights.  

Old Forester is in the heart of Downtown Louisville on Distiller's Row.  

They have a gift shop!

and a really cool but expensive bar.  We are driving so we just stuck with the tasting included in the tour.

They don't let you forget where you are

A better look at Big Penny

Big Penny doing her job, converting "Beer" into Whiskey via distillation. 

The tour had 14 guests and a guide.  It was the right size.

This facility makes about 5% of the Old Forester Product.  There are 4 fermentation tanks where Corn, Barley, and Rye are fermented to make "beer" that is about 10% ABV.  This room smelled really good.  Like cereal and bread.

Getting schooled on what makes Whiskey a Bourbon Whiskey.

In this empty fermenting tank you can see the cooling coils running around the outside to keep the yeast at the right temperature to stay alive and do its work.

It's amazing how close they let you get to the product. I wonder how many cell phones have gone in the tank?

This fermenter is on its last step.  It is agitating the "beer" as it drains out the bottom on its way to Big Penny.

the ABV (alcohol by volume) increases each day until it gets to around 10%.

Dr. Forrester was a well known Civil War (on the Union Side) surgeon that endorsed the Bourbon as medicinal so he got his name on the bottle.  An early example of celebrity endorsement.  When he passed away they removed one of the Rs in Forrester so it became Old Forester.

And early advertisement with both of the Rs.

Getting the science of distilling

The 1st run of distillate coming off of Big Penny on the right and the 140 proof White Dog (unaged whiskey) coming off of the 2nd still.

Old Forester is one of the few Distilleries that make their own barrels.  This site only makes a few a day because production here is smaller than at their other site.

A lucky attendee (the only one on the tour to have never been to a distillery) got to press the button to char the barrel.  This is an example of the timing for a medium char.  I already had my camera ready because I knew what was coming.  

After aging their whiskey they can't be used again for bourbon so they sell the barrels to all kinds of business including Scotch Distilleries, Breweries, and people making Bourbon Barrel Aged Maple Syrup.

One of the last steps of barrel making is to add a bit of water and air pressure to the finished barrel and find leaks.  Leaks are plugged with wedges, cones, and reeds.

The Hallway to the Rick House is made up to look like the inside of a charred barrel and has lights to describe some of the different tasting notes the barrel imparts on the whiskey as it becomes Bourbon.

This is the onsite Rickhouse at this facility.  It smells amazing in here.  

It opened in 2018 so all of the whiskey in here is only as old as 2018. This is an experiment to see how constant temperature effects Bourbon making.  Usually barrels expand and contract with the changes in the seasons.  This experiment keeps temperatures constant.

This might be the first barrel involved in this experiment.  It was signed and has one of the earliest barreled dates.

While in the Rickhouse I spied a tasting table.  It looked too small for our tour but I got excited about the idea of tasting Bourbon in an actual Rickhouse.

This barrel sprung a leak because they drilled a hole in it to take a bit of whiskey out to test it. They used a cone to close it back up after the test.  I am not sure why they didn't remove the bung and use a whiskey thief.  

Another shot of the signed barrel now close up.  I used my 4x zoom for the other photo.

Our guide explained their fill date code.  18 means 2018, G is the 7th letter of the alphabet so it was filled on the 7th month, July, and it was filled on the 26th day.  So 07/26/2018 or 26/07/2018 if you are not from The US.  2018/07/26 if you are naming folders in Windows and want them to sort correctly.

Here are all of their major products.  The bottles on the end are pretty special and weren't for sale during our visit.

While we were on the tour this is what they were bottling on the line.

The corking robot!

Filling the bottles.  I know that awesome How It's Made song is going through your head right now.  If you don't know what I am talking about click the link.  It's a fun song and a fun show.

This was our actual tasting room.  Cool but not as cool as the other one I saw.

We got to try and learn about their 1870 Original Batch, 1897 Bottled in Bond (the first year Bottled in Bond was a thing was in 1897), 1910 Old Fine Whiskey, and 1920 Prohibition Style.

We also got a piece of amazing candy made with dark chocolate, bourbon caramel, and marshmallow.  

Vintage Bottles

An original vintage bottle with Bourbon inside.  The Bourbon is over 100 years old and most likely not any good.

After the tour we walked across the street and got lunch.  The drive back took us through new counties in Indiana.  It was a really great day.

I finished the evening with a fantastic Manhattan.

The Blue is this year.  We are looking at mostly Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio in the center of the image.

That was it for today.  It was a great day in our opinion.  We got to do many of the things we love doing.  If you missed A Normal Weekend you can see what a normal weekend for us looks like.