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Last week we took a trip out to Kentucky to check out the Jim Beam Distillery for a tour and tasting. I don’t even know where to begin with this amazing experience, but I want to thank everyone at Jim Beam for taking time out of their day to host all of us that were on the tour and tasting.

All of us here at Bro My God are big fans of the Jim Beam small batch collection (we especially enjoy their Knob Creek line and Booker’s Bourbon). We were more than excited when we found out that Fred Noe, master distiller and grandson of the actual Jim Beam, would be giving us a tour and a private tasting of next batch of Booker’s Bourbon.

Talking with Fred Noe was definitely the highlight of the trip. Immediately upon arrival he was entertaining us with stories of his family and their adventures in running Jim Beam.  He also took us through the whole distilling process for the small and large batch bourbons they produce. In the photo below he explained how the small still worked and that they used it for their small batch bourbons and their experiments that might one day become something they offer to the public.

These are some of the barrels full of Knob Creek.

Shortly after Fred Noe showed us how the small and large stills worked, he brought us outside to do a barrel tasting of Knob Creek. I don’t know if it was the experience of having bourbon with Fred Noe or the whiskey straight out of the barrel, but it just tasted amazing.

After tasting some bourbon we were walked through the process of bottling the small batch bourbons.

As they go through and create their bourbons, they put aside some bottles for quality control purposes. While we were checking out this glorious cage of bourbon they had some 4.5 liter bottles hanging out in there. Sadly they can only be purchased in Australia.

We got to go into the oldest building at Jim Beam which is one of the rack houses used to age their bourbon.

We ended the tour with a visit to the 13 millionth barrel of bourbon produced at Jim Beam, which was signed by everyone in the company. After this we grabbed lunch and headed out to do a Booker’s tasting with Fred Noe. Adventures in bourbon with Fred Noe continue in another post-stay tuned!