Distillery Tours

Old Forester Distilling Co.

119 W Main St, Louisville, KY 40202
Website

I’ve toured all of the major distilleries in Kentucky that offer public tours (many of which aren’t right by a major city), so was excited when Brown-Forman opened the Old Forester Distillery in downtown Louisville in June 2018. No, this isn’t where all of the Old Forester on the shelves is being made, but it is much more than a micro-still.

They offer many different tours, although I have to admit I was disappointed when reviewing them on their website. I would have loved to have done their ‘Taste Through History’ tour – except when looking at availability – there were only four days (yes, FOUR) in the remainder of 2019 when it was being offered – and we weren’t going to be in Louisville on those days. (NOTE: a month after our visit, I had the opportunity to attend a ‘Taste Through History‘ event in Atlanta with Master Taster Jackie Zykan – and that was all it was cracked up to be!  While she couldn’t facilitate these on a regular basis at the distillery, I hope they consider having alternatives offer this more frequently there!)

They also offered a ‘119 Tour’ . . . or at least talk about it on their website (there are no upcoming dates as of this writing, and were none a month earlier when I was booking my tour). All of that disappointment aside, we made reservations (which they strongly encourage) for the basic ‘Old Forester Distillery Tour’. These tours are offered every 15 minutes during the available hours (last tour begins an hour before they close). The price is $16 per person on Tues-Sat, and $12 per on Sunday and Monday ($4 off for minors, active duty military, and vets; $2 off for seniors).

I booked for a 4:15pm tour on a Friday in late April for my father and I. This was to be our last stop after doing three tours earlier (some actual distillery tours, some ‘experience’ tours; will share details later). We’d been on our feet since 9:30am, aside from some drive time and sitting. All that said, we were excited as we’re both fans of Old Forester’s products. We arrived a bit early, and they were able to squeeze us into the 4pm tour with no trouble, which we appreciated.

You start out with the tour guide providing some history of the building, and of bourbon in America in general (reminding us of the horrors of prohibition, etc) before starting a short but informative video. After this, you’re ushered into the next room where they explain the basics of bourbon (51% corn, new charred oak containers, etc) and tout the limestone filtered water of Kentucky. They explain the grains used (their mashbill is 72% corn, 18% rye, 10% barley) and how the process extracts sugars from the grain to be fermented into alcohol.

Next you walk up to their four fermenters, each with mash at different ages allowing the guests to smell how a 3 day old mash fermenting smells more like a sour dough bread compared to a newly started mash, which is a more sweet cereal aroma. They explain the process, how coils help maintain the temperature to keep the yeast happy, how the activity you see is really the carbon dioxide being produced, and so forth.

Following this you’re taken to a glass elevator and ride up directly behind their 44-foot copper column still as they begin to explain the process of distillation. You exit the elevator and walk around to where if the still was running you’d see the spirit coming off, and where quality control can check the proof (which their target proof for the heart of the run is 140 proof). During our tour the still wasn’t running, but I’ve seen new make before, so this wasn’t a big deal for me. The still has a capacity far beyond what they’re running through it (currently they’re filling up to 14 barrels a day when running). They explain the cuts (heads, tails, etc) and why that’s all necessary, and then turn to the on-site cooperage.

This is where the Old Forester distillery tour is significantly different from the other urban distilleries (and frankly, even most major distilleries). If you tour Heaven Hill, Jim Beam, Buffalo Trace, Wild Turkey, Four Roses, Maker’s Mark, or Barton – you won’t see barrels being produced as they purchase barrels from a cooperage (which if you ever have an opportunity to tour Independent Stave’s Kentucky Cooperage in Lebanon, KY – I’d recommend it!) Note that this is not a critque of those fine distilleries; just a fact.  Historically it wasn’t such a great idea to have an industrial process that involves firing wood next to an industrial process producing highly flammable spirits (or aging those same spirits!)  But if you’ve never seen how a barrel is made, the Old Forester Distillery Tour gives you that opportunity.

(This is only a portion, not showing barrel assembly or toasting)

Their limited capacity allows them to construct 14 barrels a day, so you won’t see every stage ‘in action’. But they leave a barrel at each stage so you’re not looking at an empty station, and the tour guide can step you through what is being done from assembly, to toasting, to firing, and so forth. Their web-site states that “One member of each tour group will activate the charring process by ‘igniting’ the inside of a new, white oak barrel.”, and I don’t doubt this claim – although it does raise a question as to whether they re-char the same barrel, or are bringing in extra barrels to be charred (as there are more than 14 tours a day). Regardless, it is pretty freaking cool to see, and smell.

After the cooperage portion, you’re escorted through a visualization of how much color the spirit takes on in the wood over time, which is a nice segue as you enter their ‘urban rickhouse’. While you do get some of the aroma, it isn’t the same as walking into a traditional rickhouse. This is climate controlled, and only holds 800-900 barrels. They’re producing more than that on-site, so some of the filled barrels are taken to other rickhouses (or rackhouses if you prefer), while some are kept here. This allows them to experiment with how climate control impacts the same distillate over a period of time, besides providing a nice tour experience. They explain a bit about how factors involved in maturation (higher temps in the higher ricks and such), and step you through the dumping and filtration process.

Next you see the bottling line, which again may or may not be running during your tour but shows that final step in the process before the tasting. The standard tour includes fairly standard pours to taste. Ours included Old Forester 86 proof, Old Forester Statesman, and Old Forester Signature 100 proof (whose label no longer calls out “Signature”, but bygones). I’d had all three before, but the tasting was well organized with all three presented in Glencairn nosing glasses with a glass of water and some pretzels for each taster, along with a small water dropper. Our tour guide (Sarah, who by the way did an excellent job; one of the better distillery tours I’d been on) walked everyone through how to nose whiskey (keeping your mouth slightly opened), and how just 3 drops of water can open up a whiskey.

After the tasting, you’re taken through the gift shop (of course!) although this gives you an up close and personal look at their column still.  On a lovely day like we had, the blue sky really makes for a lovely view.

All things considered, I’d highly recommend their tour.  There are several tours or ‘experiences’ in Louisville (and I’ll work on providing write-ups on those in the future), but I found this to be the most comprehensive by far.  If someone who isn’t a whisk(e)y geek and only wanted to visit ONE of these during a trip to the city, hands down this would be the one I’d go with.

Cheers!
Gary

The other whiskey tour we managed to squeeze into our non-whiskey themed Ireland trip was at Teeling Whiskey Distillery, which opened in 2015.  The tours include a tasting, and they have different offerings which was nice (same tour, but more/better whiskey tasting at the end if you’re interested).  As the tour is the same for all, let’s cover that first.

Before the tour starts, they have a nice exhibition space setup. It covers some facts about the distillery (how many visitors, pours served, etc), and provides a nice historical timeline about Irish whiskey in Dublin, as well as the Teeling history.



If you’re really into that piece, I’d suggest getting there at least 30 minutes early if you want to read everything. They’re pretty proud of being the first new distillery in Dublin in over 125 years, incorporating the “phoenix rising” into their logo (and not suggesting they shouldn’t be!) The tour guide ushered us from this space into a smaller room and talked with us briefly about the history of Irish whiskey, and how it fell from grace in part through their own stubbornness (not wanting to incorporate column stills over pot stills). They play a video of the Teeling’s talking about the distillery and their plans before bringing you into the working distillery.

If you’ve toured large distilleries before, this will definitely feel smaller. They step through the basics – starting with malted barley and pass around 3 canisters that you can touch/smell/taste the difference between un-malted barley, malted barley, and “Scottish” malted barley (heated with peat smoke, and what they were using during our visit). The barley is milled into flour and combined with water in a wet mill as it is passed to the lauter tun for heating and mashing. Several hours later the resulting wort is ready to be moved to their fermenters.  It starts in one of their two 15k liter wooden fermenters, and after a bit is moved to one of their four 30k liter stainless steel fermenters to complete fermentation.  This is the first I’ve heard of anyone moving the wort between different fermentation vessels, but Teeling is nothing if not innovative.

The two wooden fermenters were open for visitors to see what’s happening inside, with one fermenting away (the other they hadn’t yet added the yeast). They allow it to ferment over about 5 days until their wash (or ‘distiller’s beer’) is about 8% ABV. I asked about the type of yeast, as I’m always intrigued by how some distilleries place great emphasis on this (maintaining yeast strains for generations, or using different yeast strains to impart different flavors, or simply using industrial yeast with no provenance).

Our guide (Eimear) explained that they use a combination of traditional distiller’s yeast (the industrial standard at many distilleries) and a white wine yeast from South Africa which they found imparts some fruity notes to the spirit. She emphasized that the yeast doesn’t make a huge difference – that only 40% of the flavor comes from the process we see in the distillery (the rest from the barrel during maturation), but acknowledged it does have a subtle difference. Those of us who have tasted through all 10  recipes of Four Roses (where there are two mashbills, but 5 yeast strains) can attest that there is absolutely an impact from yeast, and I was impressed that our tour guide not only knew the answer to my question, but had some grasp on the impact it has on the final spirit – reflects well that they’re training their folks well and not just providing scripts to read.

After fermentation, the wash moves to the first of their three, handcrafted copper pot stills (made by Frilli in Sienna, Italy).  Each of the stills are named after Jack Teeling’s three daughters. The first 15k liter wash still (Alison) takes the wash up to a low-wine of about 30% ABV. This is moved to the second 10k liter intermediat still (Natalie), where a second distillation takes the spirit up to about 65% ABV. This is moved to the third 9k liter spirit still (Rebecca) whose third distillation of the spirit renders a product of about 84% ABV.

Currently they’re producing about 30k liters of spirit a week at the distillery, and it is matured off-site about an hour north. They do have a couple of barrels aging on-site – the first barrel filled at the distillery (which has a countdown clock on the vault for when it will reach the 3 years and one day age to be legally bottled as Irish whiskey, which would be on 10/24/2018). The other is the Zoey Teeling cask, which was filled on the day she was born. For maturation, they use casks which previously held bourbon, cabernet savignon, rum, sherry, and other wines/spirits. The climate in Ireland results in the angels being less greedy, losing only about 2% every year during maturation (versus 5% for bourbon in Kentucky).

Now for my favorite part – the tasting! They offered three different tasting options we we visited. The entry level was the Teeling Tasting (€15) and included the Teeling Small Batch along with a handcrafted whiskey cocktail. The middle option was the Teeling Trinity Tasting (€20), which included the Teeling Small Batch, Teeling Single Grain, and Teeling Single Malt. We opted for the top of the line tasting, the Teeling Single Malt Tasting (€30) which per the web-site includes: Teeling Single Malt, Vintage Single Malt, and Limited Edition Single Cask.  During our visit, the “Vintage Single Malt” we got was their Teeling Revival Volume V, and the “Limited Edition Single Cask” we got was a non-chill filtered, cask strength 9 yr single malt matured in Port – which is only available at the distillery.  While not listed on the web-site, we got a 4th tasting of Teeling Small Batch in a highball glass, which was a nice palate warm-up dram (and made it easier on the guide to have everyone start with that). I liked how they managed the different tastings – when you get your ticket they give you a wrist band which is a ribbon (not one of those printed sticker things that aims to pull at your arm hairs). When you arrive to the tasting room, they have different tables based on your wrist band. This allowed the guide to move between the tables and manage the three experiences nicely without half the group feeling like they were “missing out” on what the others had.

We’ve reviewed the Small Batch and Single Malt here previously. The Revival was quite nice, although I didn’t find it appreciably better than the Single Malt.  It is difficult to do a studied tasting in this type of environment (although their setup was one of the better I’d seen to try to provide for that).  But for me, at a price point of €120 vs €55, I wasn’t blown away with the Revival. It had a lovely, long finish, and my dad thought that was his favorite of the four we tried. For me, the 9 yr port was what I liked best.

As I shared in an earlier post, I was on a mission to find a bottle of whiskey under the specific criteria – and here, on the last full day of the tour – I’d yet to purchase a bottle.
Just a reminder of those criteria:
1. Something I could afford (wanted to stay under $200)
2. Something I absolutely loved.
3. Something I could not purchase back home.
4. Something non-chill filtered.
5. Something bottled at cask strength.
6. Something distilled/matured in Ireland.
I was delighted to find something that checked every box in this 9 yr port. For €100, I’d have something delicious that I loved and could share with family/friends back home. Being able to fill my own bottle was a nice added touch. I’ll post a more thorough review when I can spend more quality time with it 🙂

They did have another single cask you could fill yourself (a 20+ yr old rum cask for €350), and they have a bar next to the gift shop so you could order a pour before you buy (something the US distilleries should consider for those gift shop exclusives; many a one-off bottle I would have bought had I been able to try it first!)

If you’re in Dublin, I’d definitely recommend carving out a couple hours (the tour/tasting was 45 minutes to an hour) and swinging buy Teeling Whiskey Distillery.

Sláinte!
Gary

Richard shared his experience just over six years ago here, and while it doesn’t sound like much has changed, I did want to highlight some of the differences and high points.

First key change from 2012 – the ticket was €13 and included 1 Jameson drink, while only a few select guests were asked to taste Jameson against an American whiskey (Jack Daniels) and a Scotch (Johnnie Walker). In 2018, the ticket is now €20, but everyone gets 1 Jameson drink AND the opportunity to taste the big three. Is it worth €20 (or $23 USD at the time we were there? To each their own (we weren’t disappointed, but I’ll share a tip to consider at the end!)

Another change from 2012; the only operational distillery offering public tours was Bushmills.  In 2018, there are two other distilleries right in Dublin:  Teeling Whiskey Distillery (began distilling in 2015) and Pearse Lyons Whiskey Distillery (which opened in July 2017, but Pearse Lyons began distilling a few years prior).  So if you’re looking for operational distillery tours, there are many more options today!  We did the Teeling Whiskey Distillery tour at the end of our trip, and I’ll share that experience later.

I agree with Richard that if you’re well versed in how whiskey is made, the tour is unlikely to break new ground.  This isn’t an operational distillery today, but I thought they did a good job as they tried to lay down now only the process, but make it sensory interactive.  First – you can get your free Jameson drink before OR after the tour.  Arriving early, we opted for before, and the choices were either neat, on the rocks, or in a cocktail (which I didn’t get the details of, but it involved ginger ale and my Dad thought it was pretty good).  These were all premade/prepoured, and you handed them your stub and took one.

After a short history lesson and a video, the guide takes you into a room where you have groups of 4 at a workstation where they’ll walk you through the whiskey making process.

These nifty workstations are in a fairly dark room, and each has focused lights above it that will highlight the area that the guide is talking about.  They start with malting, and highlight the tile in the middle (from a malting room floor), and have malted/unmalted barely that you can feel/smell (I guess taste, but who knows how many folks have fondled it; and the guide didn’t suggest this).  Then they move to distillation, where they have a spritzer bottle of spirit produced from a column still and a pot still, and invite you to spritz a long piece of paperboard (think ‘perfume sample’ in a department store) and smell the difference.  Then, they talk about the maturation process on the right, with bottles showing the color progression, and small boxes where you can uncork and smell the difference between a bourbon cask and a sherry cask.  All in all, I thought it was fairly well done – and for folks who aren’t familiar with whiskey making, probably fairly educational.

Then we get to the good part – the tasting.  Everyone gets 3 pours in front of them, and they’re labeled simply “Scotch Whiskey”, Jameson, “American Whiskey”.  He has everyone nose the Jameson first and talks about what most experience.  Then he has everyone take a wee sip just to prime the palate.  He has everyone then nose the American Whiskey and asks if folks can guess what it is (Jack Daniels).  Then he does the same with the Scotch Whiskey (Johnnie Walker – I thought Red but couldn’t swear to it).  This exercise was to highlight how Jameson compares to the best selling American Whiskey and Scotch Whisky on the planet.  We didn’t get any certificates or anything, but it was an enjoyable tasting.

After the tasting, you are customarily ushered through the gift shop, which had a nice assortment of stuff.

A little background – during our trip to Ireland, I was on a quest to find a bottle of whiskey that met certain criteria (listed in order; I was willing to give up the last couple)

1. Something I could afford (wanted to stay under $200)
2. Something I absolutely loved.
3. Something I could not purchase back home.
4. Something non-chill filtered.
5. Something bottled at cask strength.
6. Something distilled/matured in Ireland.

Hence, I was willing to bring home a fine, independent bottling of Scotch if I found one at a shop – provided I could try it first to check off that 2nd box. Nothing in the gift shop jumped out at me, but in the bar area, we noticed that they had a “fill your own bottle straight from the cask” setup which was intriguing. For €100, you could fill your own bottle of cask strength (I’d assume non-chill filtered) Jameson Black Barrel. That definitely checked some of the boxes, and when we asked if we could buy a sample at the bar, they obliged (which gave us a chance to check every box!) My Dad and I shared the pour (a standard 35 mL pour) and gradually added water as we went. The barrel was about 60% ABV, and my guess is that somewhere close to 50% it really hit its stride. Delicious for sure! My challenge was that while delicious, it wasn’t tremendously complex (and while non-age stated, it is likely 7 yrs old or so). Also, this was only the second full day in our 16 day trip. I made a note that if I didn’t find anything I liked better, I’d probably talk myself into a bottle of this.

So – what tip might I offer to those who are familiar enough with the whiskey making process? I’d still pay this a visit if you have the opportunity, but I’d skip the tour all together and go right to the bar and order a pour of the cask strength Black Barrel (be sure to specify that you want to try what they’re selling at that time!) You might be impressed enough to leave with a pretty unique bottle, and one you’ll hopefully enjoy.

Sláinte!
Gary