whisky, bourbon , is the characteristic whisky of the United States and can only be made there, although contrary to popular belief it need not be made in the state of Kentucky. However, Kentucky still produces the vast majority of the bourbon made. According to the Kentucky Distillers’ Association, the state made two million 200-liter barrels of bourbon each year in 2018 and 2019. As of January 2020, there were 9.3 million barrels of bourbon aging in Kentucky warehouses.
Distillers of the whisky must adhere to tight federal regulations, including the types of grain that are used. According to the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB), bourbon needs to be made from at least 51 percent corn (maize). The rest of the mash bill typically includes 5–15 percent malted barley, which helps with the fermentation process, and the rest is rounded out with either wheat or, more commonly, rye. See
Today, the milled grains are mixed together with hot water (“mashed”) and fermented to make what is called a “distiller’s beer.” See mash. This mixture is then generally pumped unstrained into a column still. See still, continuous. The size of the still and its configuration vary widely across the industry. Some brands also use what is called a thumper, or a doubler, to distill the spirit a second time. See doubler, thumper, keg, and retort. The twenty-first-century craft-distilling boom has seen a significant number of small distilleries return to making bourbon in pot stills, which are what the whisky was originally produced in two hundred years ago.
Bourbon cannot be more than 62.5 percent ABV when it comes off the still and must be at least 40 percent ABV—and no more than 80 percent—when it’s bottled and sold. Like all spirits, bourbon starts out clear and gets its color and much of its flavor from barrel aging. Federal regulations also stipulate how the spirit can be aged. It must be “stored” in a new oak container, which now generally means an unused barrel made from American oak. This requirement is unique to the United States and does more than anything else to set bourbon (along with rye and Tennessee whiskies) apart from whisky made elsewhere. See whisky, rye; and whisky, Tennessee. The inside of the container is charred (also a point of uniqueness) and generally has an appearance similar to alligator skin. (American cooperages will char the wood to each brand’s specifications, and there are several different levels of char that are generally used.) The charring of the wood helps to caramelize the sugars in the wood, and the charcoal is a natural filter that removes some of the less advantageous compounds from the spirit as well as impurities. Every year the barrel ages it loses some of its volume to evaporation. See angel’s share. Given Kentucky’s hot, relatively dry summers, bourbon generally gets stronger as it ages, since the water evaporates before the alcohol. After a distillery uses a barrel once, that barrel can’t be used again to make bourbon. The industry therefore generates mountains of lightly used surplus barrels every year. A great many of them find a second life around the world, put to work aging everything from Scotch whisky to rum to tequila. (They can also be used to make American whisky, but it cannot be labeled bourbon or rye.) There is no minimum age requirement for bourbon: if it spends just a few days in oak, it can still be called bourbon. Only after two years, however, can it be called “straight” bourbon. The origins of bourbon are, as is so often the case, obscure. Reverend Elijah Craig (1738–1808) is often credited as Kentucky’s first distiller, back in 1789, and hence the grandfather of bourbon (there is a modern brand of whisky owned by Heaven Hill that honors him). However, as Henry Crowgey notes in his landmark history of the spirit, “Any argument as to the identity of Kentucky’s first distiller should be considered purely academic.” See Crowgey, Henry Gundry. Settlers had been filtering into Kentucky since the 1770s, founding their first towns in 1774 and 1775. Distilling was a common frontier skill, and it’s highly unlikely that they would have let fifteen years elapse before making some whisky from the corn that grew so well in the territory. There are several elaborate theories about the origins of the name “bourbon,” and they have been debated endlessly. But as Gerald Carson writes in The Social History of Bourbon, “Perhaps there has been altogether too much emphasis upon who was the first man to make old-fashioned small-tub whisky of the bourbon type, and in what country he did it. Distilling was common work incidental to western pioneer life, as prosaic as building a fodder stack. Let us look back upon the accomplishment of our sturdy grandsirs and agree that there is glory enough for all.” Kentucky corn whisky started out as a spirit made by farmers. It turned a perishable product into a finished and sought-after one. (The spent grain, left over from the distillation process, would be used as feed for cattle. The animal dung would then be used to fertilize the next crop of grains growing. This created a sustainable model of production and limited the amount of waste produced.) The characteristic American practice of distilling a mash, which has the particles of ground-up grain in it, rather than a wash, in which they have been filtered out, can be explained by the fact that this makes a much better animal feed. It is also how Kornbranntwein was made in Germany. See korn. While German immigrants have been largely written out of bourbon history, many early distillers were in fact German, including the widely influential Beam family, whose contributions to the industry run far and wide. The family traces its history back to Johannes Jakob Boehm, who either arrived in the United States from Germany in the 1750s or was born in southeastern Pennsylvania to parents who had recently come over from the old country. Either way, he ultimately changed his name to Jacob Beam. See Jim Beam. An influx of Jews from Germany and eastern Europe (who had centuries of distilling and liquor business knowledge) also helped build the industry in the 1800s. By the 1820s, “bourbon” had become a well-known descriptor and had begun appearing in advertisements, such as the 1827 one by H. I. De Bruin of Maysville, Kentucky, for “3 years old bourbon whisky of superior quality.” In 1824, a Pennsylvanian how-to-book writer by the name of Parker noted in his discussion of distilling that “if the inside of a new barrel be charred or burnt black, it will add much to the flavor, and will also give a good color to the liquor.” Charring was a well-known technique that had been discussed in European scientific journals since the late 1700s, and had already been used by Jamaican rum-distillers to rectify faulty spirits and by ship provisioners to keep water from spoiling, but this was the first acknowledgment of its use in American whisky making. It rapidly became the standard, for rye and for bourbon as well. Many of the customers for this original bourbon would buy the whisky from small farm producers and blend them together and/or re-distill the liquor. Some of the bourbon was also shipped to the East Coast to be blended into rye whisky. By the 1840s, however, American drinkers were beginning to appreciate the quality of real Kentucky bourbon. It was particularly popular in Chicago and the big new cities of the Midwest and on the frontier; the thickly settled Northeast and the great port of New Orleans tended to prefer the spicier, leaner rye whisky. See whisky, rye. The American Civil War also disrupted bourbon production, with many of the distillers finding themselves involved in the fighting. Because of the phylloxera epidemic—which destroyed grape vineyards across Europe in the late 1800s and wrecked cognac, port, and sherry brands—bourbon was also shipped to the East. The implosion of the Irish whisky category shortly after the turn of the century also helped spur bourbon sales. See Unfortunately, like the rest of the American liquor industry, Prohibition destroyed the bourbon category, although some brands were permitted to bottle so-called medicinal whisky. See Prohibition and Temperance in America. After Repeal (in December 1933), the bourbon industry was in disarray. Some brands released whisky made before Prohibition went into effect, which was overpoweringly woody and almost undrinkable. Money poured into the category, with new brands building distilleries and releasing very young whiskies just to get something out. There was also a wave of consolidation. A few large companies, including Seagram’s, Schenley, and Brown-Forman, bought up many smaller brands and even more intellectual property. The industry shut down again in the 1940s for World War II, and the distillers made a range of supplies for the armed forces, with the War Production Board helping the ones still using pot and three-chamber stills to switch to column stills. Bourbon became quite scarce during the war. After World War II ended, there was a renewed race to produce bourbon. Through the 1950s and 1960s, bourbon’s popularity continued to grow. In 1964, Congress declared bourbon a “distinctive product of the United States,” protecting it from foreign competition. Sales of bourbon in the United States reached an apex in 1970. The good times were short lived and, thanks to a range of factors, including the popularity of vodka and a seismic generational shift, sales of the whisky decreased for roughly the next thirty years. The rebirth of bourbon is a fairly recent phenomenon. American distillers followed the lead of single malt scotch makers and realized that premium bourbon would attract a crowd of new buyers and change the perception of the whisky. One of the first people to realize that this was the appropriate shift was Elmer T. Lee, who created the groundbreaking single-barrel whisky Blanton’s Bourbon. Booker Noe, Jim Beam’s grandson, was also clandestinely working on a special project that would later become what we now know as Booker’s Bourbon. It was the first release in his Small Batch Bourbon Collection, which would ultimately include Knob Creek, Baker’s, and Basil Hayden’s. These whiskies helped Beam prosper in the modern era and helped save the American whisky industry. See Booker Noe II, Frederick. According to IWSR Drinks Market Analysis, sales of bourbon by volume in the United States have increased by 167 percent from 2000 to 2020. (And drinkers around the world have developed a taste for bourbon, with exports rising steadily until the recent tariff wars disrupted business.) This recent popularity of the whisky has inspired a new generation of brands based in Kentucky and around the country, including New York, Texas, and California. Modern distillers have mined history to create a range of whiskies that attempt to capture the past, while others have pushed boundaries, experimenting with everything from barrel design to the variety of grain to create new versions of the spirit. Bryson, Lew. “America’s First Family of Bourbon: the Beams.” Daily Beast, January 22, 2020. https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-beams-are-americas-first-family-of-bourbon (accessed May 11, 2021) . Carson, Gerald. The Social History of Bourbon. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1963. Crowgey, Henry G. Kentucky Bourbon. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1971 De Bruin, H. I. Advertisement. Maysville (KY) Eagle, November 27, 1827. “Kentucky Bourbon Quick Shots.” Kentucky Distillers’ Association. https://kybourbon.com/bourbonculture-2/keybourbon_facts/ (accessed May 11, 2021). “Kentucky Whiskey: The Different Methods of Distillation.” New York Times, April 4, 1870. Mitenbuler, Reid. Bourbon Empire. New York: Viking, 2015. Parker, M. The Arcana of Arts and Sciences, or Farmers’ and Mechanics’ Manual. Washington, PA: n.p., 1824. Rothbaum, Noah. The Art of American Whiskey. Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed, 2015. By: Noah Rothbaum Label for Peach Orchard bourbon, ca. 1873. The illustration shows the old “fire copper” style of bourbon making, with a wood-fired pot still. Attached to the still (in cutaway view) are the worm tub and what appears to be a large charcoal rectifier. Library of Congress.
Label for Peach Orchard bourbon, ca. 1873. The illustration shows the old “fire copper” style of bourbon making, with a wood-fired pot still. Attached to the still (in cutaway view) are the worm tub and what appears to be a large charcoal rectifier. Source: Library of Congress.