Our good friends at The Handy Spot in Ashley, Indiana invited us to join them for a barrel pick down at Maker’s Mark. Well, it really isn’t a “barrel pick” as much as it is a “barrel recipe” selection.
When you go there, they start off by doing a typical distillery tour. We had, for the second time, Hannah as our tour guide. Interesting fact that she spent some time living close by in Granger, Indiana which is a town close to us. She took us to all the typical distillery places and explained how things worked. We started in the Yeast room where she explained to us where and how they keep and process their yeast.
From the yeast room Hannah took us to see the mash room and their over 100 year old Cypress wood mash tanks. These takes were the original tanks used to ferment the mash and are still in use today. This day were were fortunate enough to see the tanks empty, and could see just how deep they actually are.
From the fermentation room we then went to the spirit safe and were able to sample the low and high wine, or white dog, straight from the still. It was oily or viscus, flavorful and strong! I would like to try to make a cocktail out of it some day.
After sampling the white dog, we walked over to the bottling line and watched them bottle and hand dip into their signature red wax their 1.75 Liter bottles. It was interesting to watch them hand dip them and be placed on the conveyer belt and watch the wax drip down the neck of the bottle. There is just something relaxing about that. It was interesting that they have fan blowers all down the line cooling the wax before it gets to the boxing station.
From the bottling line we walked over the Maker’s 46 Cellar, or cave. This is where they store in a temperature controlled environment the barrels that will make up their 46 brand. It is basically a small rick house built inside of a blasted out cave made of solid limestone.
After seeing how Makers 46 ages, we boarded a small van/bus and Hannah drove us up to the Lakeside Tasting Room, which sits atop one of the only lakes in the entire state of Kentucky. It is fed by the same spring that they get their water from.
Once inside the tasting room, we started to get to the business of selecting our recipe for our barrel. And when I say “our barrel” I mean the one that Tipsy will purchase and all the bottles will go to his and his brother-in-law’s chain of Handy Spot Liquor stores in Ashley, Gary and Bristol, Indiana.
The process of selecting a recipe begins with selecting ten wooden staves (or planks) of various types of Oak wood. The wood we had to choose from was:
P2=Baked American Pure 2: American Oak, with a Low and slow Toast in a conventional oven, with a classic cut.
CU=Seared French Cuvee: French Oak, with an infrared Toast, with ridges or ruffles cut.
46=Maker’s Mark 46: French Oak, with a Seared, infrared Toast, with a classic cut.
MN=Roasted French Mendiant: French Oak, with low and slow Toast, with classic cut.
SP=Toasted French Spice: French Oak, with high and low Toast, with classic cut.
We ended up with five varieties of recopies and we voted on our number two recipe that ended up being: 2,1,4,2,1. Meaning that the makeup of the 10 staves would be:
Two of the Baked American Pure 2
One of the Seared French Cuvee
Four of the Maker’s Mark 46
Two of the Roasted French Mendiant
One of the Toasted French Spice
After we did our final selections Hannah drove us back to the barrel room and we all got to sign the barrel head that all of the staves that we picked out would go into. They will sit in the barrel for a couple of months and then be bottled and boxed and then shipped out to Tipsy’s store for sale.
The last think Hannah did for us is to take us to their newly remodeled restaurant for dinner, and by that time everyone had a big appetite. The food was very good, and then we all went back home.
