Buffalo Trace news

Some info that Buffalo Trace sent about their expansion....sounds like there is a lot more Bourbon in the pipeline!

Distillery Expansion Phase II

This past summer we entered Phase II of our $1.2 billion Distillery expansion, which will allow us to continue to make more whiskey. We anticipate this phase to span two years.

We installed four new fermenters this summer. These fermenter tanks are 93,000 gallons each and join the four new fermenters we added in 2019.

We are also building another Still House. So far, the concrete pads for the new tanks and the foundation for the building have been poured and we are now entering the early stages of construction, laying underground piping, completing foundation work and preparing to assemble the first tanks.

A new spent mash drying house is also in the works. We are renovating our long disused 1880s Warehouse B to become our new “Dry House” which allows us to process left over sour mash so that it can sold on to food supply chain companies.

A new hammer mill, process cooling system and a complete $45.0 million wastewater treatment plant are also part of Phase II, and are currently in the design and preparation stages.


Warehouse Expansion Update

We are moving right along with the Warehouse expansion taking place on our Whiskey Farm, adjacent to the Distillery. In the spring of 2018, we began filling our first new warehouse, Warehouse AA, and since then have built and filed Warehouses AA through HH.

This year we are adding three new barrel warehouses of the same size and plan to continue to add future warehouses at a rate of one every four months until further notice.

Each of these warehouses hold 58,800 barrels or 14.1 million bottles, are seven stories tall and metal clad with insulation.

We are one of the few distilleries, and the first, to heat our warehouses. Col., E.H. Taylor, Jr. started steam heating the warehouses he built here in the late 1800s, and we have continued that practice. The heating system for the new warehouses on the farm is a patented heating system in the floors with dual zones so temperatures in each warehouse can be managed independently.

We are excited to share that through rigorous analysis, the new warehouses compared to the warehouses on our main campus are yielding consistent taste profiles for our whiskeys. This is something we have worked very hard to ensure. We test all barrels in the new warehouses every 12 months and run them through a full sensory analysis to compare them to our “standard” for that brand at the part in its aging cycle and also compare them against barrels which have been aging the same amount of time in our more established warehouses on our main campus. As our barrels continue to rest we’ll continue to monitor them and run tests as we do with all of our aging barrels to make sure they are meeting or exceeding brand standards of quality.


This is going to be a tough one to get --- 

Harvesting Corn from our Farm 

This past October we harvested our latest crop of heirloom corn from our farm. Over the summer we grew 18 acres of one of the oldest corn varieties, dating back to 1,000 B.C., called Indian corn.

Commonly referred to by its nickname “Flint Corn,” due to its reputation of being “hard as flint,” this type of corn can be consumed by livestock and is often ground to make hominy and polenta. This strain of corn is also often used as a centerpiece on Thanksgiving tables as it is commonly viewed as the symbol of fall and the harvest.

At harvest, the kernel colors were quite diverse as expected, and rich in traditional fall colors, including white, red, yellow, brown and blue.

However, the overall yield did not result as hoped and is expected to produce just a few barrels of bourbon. Once harvested, the corn was placed in our grain silo on the farm and will eventually be milled, cooked, distilled and barreled.

This was the sixth crop of heirloom corn we have grown and harvested on the “Whiskey Farm.” Over the last five summers, we have grown Boone County White corn, Japonica Striped corn, CF790 Conventional corn, Neon Pink Popcorn and Royal Blue and Hickory Cane White corn.

Each crop harvested on the farm is being distilled and aged on site to one day become expressions of “Single Estate” bourbons. Name, age or price of this future bourbon is still to be determined.