Beam's New Visitor Experience Is Officially Open

Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear and Beam executives officially opened the doors yesterday to a new visitor experience at Beam's flagship distillery in Clermont.

They also officially inaugurated Beam's new Global Innovation Center and celebrated Beam's one-year anniversary as a standalone, publically-traded company, Beam Inc. (NYSE: BEAM).

Beam predicts that the new visitor experience will more than double tourism visits to Clermont, to 200,000 annually.

This will be the first time public tours have gone inside a Beam distillery.

Yesterday's openings represent a $30 million multi-year investment by Beam.

According to family lore, patriarch Jacob Beam sold his first barrel of whiskey in Kentucky in 1795.

“Today is another great day for the Commonwealth of Kentucky,” said Governor Beshear. “The Bourbon industry plays a vital role in Kentucky’s economic success and the opening of the fantastic Jim Beam American Stillhouse means more tourism for our state and ultimately more jobs for Kentucky families.”

The new 57,000 square foot Global Innovation Center on the distillery grounds features state-of-the-art technical, R&D and design labs that will fuel the company’s aggressive new-product development initiatives for all markets around the world. “We aim to deliver 25 percent of our company’s annual sales growth from new products, and our new Global Innovation Center will help ensure our innovation capabilities remain second to none,” said Beam President and CEO Matt Shattock.

The Jim Beam American Stillhouse showcases the Jim Beam Bourbon-making process from start to finish. Guided tours start with Beam’s natural limestone water well and take guests through the mashing, distilling, barreling, storing and bottling lines. A total whiskey immersion engages the senses, while also offering guests a historical look at The First Family of Bourbon.

The Jim Beam American Stillhouse is located approximately 30 minutes southeast of Louisville and is open weekdays and Saturdays 9:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and Sundays from 12:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. (Closed on Sundays in January and February, as well as New Year’s Day, Easter, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day). For more information or to order your reservation tickets online, visit the Jim Beam American Stillhouse online at www.AmericanStillhouse.com or under the “distillery” section of www.JimBeam.com.

The Genealogy Of Beam Yeast

The post earlier this month, in which Sam Cecil briefly outlines the careers of the many Beam family distillers, raised a question about the yeast all of those Beams were using, not just at Jim Beam but at Heaven Hill, Four Roses, Yellowstone, Maker's Mark, Barton, Stitzel-Weller, Early Times, and many others.

The specific question: Jim Beam's yeast has a reputation for imparting a 'foxy' taste, a characteristic not associated with any other producer, despite having Beams in their lineage. How come?

Historically, 'yeast making' meant propagating a strain from a wild source. Although the Beams all started from the same place, with the same yeast mash recipe, and were all taught the same organoleptic standards, each distiller in each generation would have made his own subtle adaptations after years of practice, and would have passed his way of doing things on to his son.

I say 'son,' knowing that some Beam family distillers were trained by their grandfathers more than their fathers.

Either way, the genealogy of the yeasts is essentially that of the yeast makers.

David Beam (1802-1852) had three sons who became distillers. If you're a fan of Underworld, think of them as the three sons of Alexander Corvinus.

The youngest, Jack Beam, started Early Times and although his only son followed him into the business, there was no third generation. That line died out. It's unknown if that strain was preserved and passed on to the people who revived Early Times after Prohibition, but it seems unlikely.

The other two were Joseph B. Beam and David M. Beam. Those two traditions split more than 150 years ago, and there have been many other subdivisions since.

Each of them had two distiller sons. Joseph B. had Joseph L. (Joe) and Minor Case, and David M had the famous Jim Beam and his brother, Park.

We know from Booker Noe, Jim Beam's grandson, that the Jim Beam yeast was 'caught' by Jim on his back porch in Bardstown as Prohibition was ending and he prepared to build a new distillery.

When Park's son, Earl, left the Jim Beam Distillery in 1946, he took the Jim Beam yeast with him to Heaven Hill, replacing the Joe Beam yeast Joe's son Harry was then using. Under Earl Beam, Heaven Hill's bourbon had a reputation for being oily, but not 'foxy' like Beam.

I should note that, to me, the 'foxy' yeast characteristic is only noticeable in the white label Jim Beam expression.

It's hard to say what changed at Heaven Hill. It may have been the water. Yeast can change for very subtle reasons -- different water, different atmospheric conditions, different airborne microorganisms, different mash temperature, a different amount of back set, etc. The loss of the 'foxy' characteristic may have been deliberate, or an accidental by-product of different practices in a different place.

In addition to training his sons Joe and Minor Case, Joseph B. Beam may also have trained Will McGill. Will was a friend of son Joe, who married Will's sister, Katherine McGill.  Will must have been a good student because he became Pappy Van Winkle's master distiller at Stitzel-Weller after Prohibition.

It is likely Joe and Will also learned from Joe's older brother, Minor Case, who was 11 years Joe's senior. Minor had his own distillery at Gethsemane, which made the brand Old Trump, and which eventually merged with the nearby Yellowstone distillery. Joe and Will worked together at many different distilleries during their early careers, including at the Tom Moore distillery, today's Barton.

So the Stitzel-Weller yeast that made its way to Maker's Mark would have originated with Joseph B. Beam and probably went through Minor Case to get to Will McGill, and from him into the hands of Elmo Beam, Joe's firstborn, who would already have been familiar with his father's version.

That Pappy gave the yeast to Bill Samuels Sr. is known, but what Elmo actually used is not, at least not by me. Sam Cecil probably knew, since he followed Elmo at Maker's Mark.

Among his many feats, Joe Beam restarted Four Roses (then in Shively) after Prohibition, and employed some of his seven distiller sons there, as well as some of their sons. Seagram's bought Four Roses during WWII and Roy's son, Charlie, spent most of his career with Seagram's, where he developed the Eagle Rare Bourbon brand before finishing his career at Four Roses in Lawrenceburg.

Minor's son, Guy, was a distiller or master distiller at several different distilleries, including Heaven Hill, Fairfield, and Cummins-Collins. During Prohibition he was a distiller in Canada. Guy had two distiller sons, Burch and Jack. A third son, Walter, who was better known as Toddy, operated a liquor store in downtown Bardstown that still bears his name.

Jack worked for Barton. The two brothers who recently started the micro distillery Limestone Springs in Lebanon are descended from Guy.

Nobody is catching wild yeast these days and if distillers want to tweak their yeast, they do it in the lab, not on a back porch as Jim Beam did.

Remembering The War Of 1812's Zimmer And Copus Massacres.

September 10 and 14 will mark the 200th anniversary of the Zimmer and Copus massacres, significant incidents in the War of 1812.

That this year's observance of the War of 1812 Bicentennial has been tepid at best is perhaps a subject for another time. This post involves a sequence of events that took place in and around my hometown of Mansfield, Ohio. Although they preceded my birth by 139 years, it is fair to say I grew up with them.

Watch how I work bourbon into it.

American settlement of the so-called Northwest Territory, including what is now Ohio, began in earnest in1788. Ohio became a state in 1803. Mansfield was founded in 1808. By 1812, it was a small town encircled by many remote farmsteads.

Native Americans were still resident in the area. They co-existed with the settlers most of the time, but northwestern Ohio was still very much the frontier, and the British—who controlled the Great Lakes—were constantly testing the borders and harassing settlers, usually through Indian surrogates.

My father’s family was in southeastern Ohio at the time. My mother’s family was still a few decades away from their relocation from northern Europe to Cleveland. We were mid-20th century arrivals to the Mansfield area.

One of Mansfield’s first settlers was a miller named Jacob Beam. No, not that Jacob Beam. He and his were in Kentucky by then. This Jacob Beam may have been a relative, however, since he practiced the same crafts (corn milling and whiskey-making) and came to Ohio from western Pennsylvania.

Beam’s homestead and mill were about three miles southeast of Mansfield, on the Rocky Fork of the Mohican River. There would eventually be more than 180 gristmills, sawmills and linseed oil mills in Richland County, but Beam’s was the first. Because Beam was always busy, farmers might have to wait hours, even days, to have their grain processed.

While they waited, Beam’s wife, known familiarly as ‘Mother Beam,’ fed them her famous corn-cakes, corn-dodgers, and other specialties. We assume whiskey was also available to help pass the time. Not surprisingly, Beam’s Mill became a popular gathering place for the otherwise isolated farmers.

When the British started to make trouble in the area, in the run-up to 1812, Beam’s Mill also became important for local security. A defensive structure, known as a blockhouse, was built, one of several in the area. Everyone knew to head to the nearest blockhouse at the first sign of trouble.

On September 10, 1812, troops bivouacked at Beam’s Mill were patrolling the area and discovered the bodies of four dead settlers at the nearby farm of George Zimmer. As word of the killings spread, settlers fled to Beam’s Mill for the security of its blockhouse and bivouacked troops. Four days later, a small detachment of soldiers was dispatched from Beam’s Mill to the nearby farm of James Copus as a precaution. Captain Martin, who was in command of the troops at Beam’s Mill, promised to send more the next day, but his scouts failed to detect any Indian presence, so he concluded that the danger had passed.

He was wrong.

Indians attacked the Copus farm, killing three soldiers and one settler, and wounding several others. The attacks were widely publicized and blamed on the British, and thus played a role in the propaganda wars attendant to the shooting one.

I recall being hauled out to the Copus Monument many times as a child and told the hair-raising tale. After these tragedies, Beam’s Mill and the Beam surname rarely appear in Mansfield history. Perhaps the family simply moved on, as so many did. In the southwestern part of Ohio, in Clinton County, other Beams built a large mill that still operates to this day, known as the Joe Beam and Sons Mill. Then, of course, there are those Beams who wound up further south, in the area around Bardstown, Kentucky.

On the Rocky Fork today, nothing remains of Beam’s Mill or its blockhouse, although ‘Beam’s Mill’ as a place name continued to be known into the early 20th century. The remains of a similar blockhouse, on Mansfield’s town square, were used to reconstruct a full-size replica which stands in the city’s South Park today (pictured above).

Sam Cecil Talks About The Beam Family.

The Beam Family Reunion is coming up on September 8, at the Jim Beam Distillery in Clermont, Kentucky. If you are descended from Jacob Beam, you should check it out.

Like most of the Beams, Sam Cecil was born and raised in Nelson County, Kentucky. Like so many of them, he spent his entire career in the whiskey business. In his case, the career spanned more than 40 years. Even after he retired in 1980, Cecil worked occasionally for Heaven Hill, giving history-oriented tours of Bardstown and vicinity.

In 1999, he published The Evolution Of The Bourbon Industry In Kentucky, an invaluable historic resource. Cecil died in 2005.

In 1992, he was interviewed for the documentary "Made and Bottled in Kentucky," which you will see is available for purchase in the column to the right. If you live in Kentucky, you can probably catch it on KET, where it first aired 20 years ago and is still in heavy rotation.

In this excerpt, Sam Cecil sorts out the many threads of the whiskey-making Beam family.

Micro Limestone Branch Joins KDA.

Limestone Branch Distillery today announced that it has joined the historic ranks of the Kentucky Distillers’ Association, the Commonwealth’s leading voice on spirits issues.

“We’re proud to welcome yet another one of the state’s emerging and innovative Craft distilleries to the KDA,” said Jeff Conder, Chairman of the KDA Board of Directors and Vice President of Americas Operations for Beam, Inc. “Our Craft members are an important part of our organization, and we look forward to working with them to promote and protect our signature Bourbon and distilled spirits industry,” Conder said.

Limestone Branch was founded in 2011 by brothers Steve and Paul Beam, whose ancestral roots run deep in the Bourbon industry. Their great-great grandfather was Joseph Washington Dant, an early Bourbon pioneer, and their great grandfather was Minor Case Beam, the eldest son of Joseph M. Beam in the legendary Beam lineage.

Their small batch Craft distillery is producing a variety of whiskeys from heirloom white corn grown on its Marion County property. The first offerings will be T.J. Pottinger corn whiskey and T.J. Pottinger Sugar Shine, with plans for an artisan rum and vodka. “It is an honor to join this distinguished group of Kentucky distillers,” Steve Beam said. “As Craft distillers, we are fortunate to have such a valuable resource as the KDA and its members to draw upon. “We are very excited to return our family to the Kentucky distilling community.”

Limestone Branch becomes KDA’s tenth member and the fourth Kentucky Craft distillery to join. The KDA is a non-profit trade association founded in 1880. Members include Beam Inc. (Jim Beam and Maker’s Mark), Brown-Forman, Diageo North America, Four Roses, Heaven Hill and Wild Turkey. Craft distillery members include Alltech, Barrel House Distilling Co. and MB Roland Distillery.

The KDA’s Craft membership is available to licensed Kentucky distillers that maintain an inventory of less than 25,000 barrels of distilled beverage spirits, according to KDA President Eric Gregory. “Craft distilleries bring a unique perspective on issues that affect our industry because they’re small businesses,” Gregory said. “Yet they’re an important part of our growth, and we’re thrilled that many are choosing Kentucky, the authentic home for Bourbon, to launch their business.”

“We applaud Limestone Branch on their opening, and we look forward to working with them to promote our rich heritage, to advocate fair treatment of our industry and to continue our commitment to responsible drinking.”