How Jack Daniel's Tennessee Whiskey is made - BRANDMADE in AMERICA

the oldest distillery in America Jack Daniels set the bar for Tennessee whiskey old number seven started as a World's Fair gold medal winner a hundred and fifty years later it still has icon status you could remove the label from the bottle and people would still be able to look at it that's a Jack Daniels bottle this whiskey has long represented free spirits and independence the stones drank it proudly and Frank Sinatra made it his staple beverage his daughter made sure that there was a bottle of Jack Daniels buried with him a billion liters ships to 140 countries every year and every drop comes out of a dry town with one stoplight what do you think we make the finest whiskey in the world right here in Lynchburg it's hard to believe but Jack Daniels is made in a town where it's illegal to sell it 80 years after prohibition Lynchburg Tennessee is still drying you can't buy it liquor by the drink on the square here there's not a bar there's not a whiskey store here in town as a distillery it's important to be close to your water source and Jack struck liquid gold in the mid-1800s when he moved his distillery to Lynchburg Cave Springs every drop of Jack Gang noses made miss spring water right here every problem the initial ingredients are the same as when Jack started corn malted barley and rye the mix has a very low percentage of ride where most Kentucky Bourbon czar Bowl peppery or spicy I describe Jack as being sweet to okie and character 150 trucks a week come through the distillery carting grain for the whiskey there's about 1 million pounds of grain a day that's being unloaded and elevated into our silos Jack Daniels is a sour mash whiskey which means that some of the spent grains from previous batches are used to start fermentation on a new batch what that means is basically that you recycle some of your distillate the spent grains are added to the ground corn and cave spring water and cooked in a mash cooker the mash cookers are basically heating up the grains cooling them back down and then setting them into the fermenter as the temperature cools rye is added and then barley malt along with Jack Daniels own strain of yeast the yeast that we use today is the one that we've had since Prohibition because yeast decays when it's exposed to air or moisture Jack Daniels isn't taking any chances with their yeast we do keep the cultures these cultures in cryogenic storage as a backup measure the yeast and the mash will sit in the fermenting tanks for four to six days okay this fermenter was set approximately three hours ago you can see how this one is starting to actively bubble after several hours the yeast really gets rolling not from heat four from the yeast acting on the water and grains it takes each one of those molecules and splits it kind of 50/50 between a co2 molecule and an ethanol molecule or whisky after the yeast has done its work a liquid with about a 12% alcohol content is transferred to a copper still for distillation what you're doing inside a distillation column is just taking the advantage of the fact that alcohol will become a vapor at the right temperature alcohol will turn to vapor but the excess water will remain liquid you want to be hot enough that you can vaporize the alcohol but not so hot that you're also making steam from the water the vaporized alcohol is transferred and cooled back into a liquid this time the alcohol content is at a full 140 proof and then all you're gonna do is collect that off into your condenser next the condensed whiskey is passed through charcoal made by burning wrecks of sugar maple it has no taste or smell when burned what we're using here is a hundred and forty proof whiskey we start the sooner the whiskey used as fuel for the fire it's pulled straight from the still raise we use that because we don't want any kind of petroleum products after the wood is burned it's cooled down and moved into the charcoal room for grinding we're bringing it in here and put it in this grinder and grind it up to about a quarter-inch consistence really wanted a quarter-inch consistency is it music more surface area more surface area ensures the whiskey will run through the charcoal and not around it one of the Charco does is filter the future oils of corn oils out of the whiskey when it goes out the bottom of this 10 foot of this charcoal is 140 proof of Tennessee whiskey the vats are made of white oak the charcoal is changed out at least every six months it takes four to five days before the whiskey Ford to go from the top to the bottom what separates this Tennessee whiskey from bourbon is that bourbon doesn't undergo charcoal mellowing a bourbon goes from the steel to the barrel to the warehouse Tennessee whiskey goes from the steel through the charcoal the barrel and then the warehouse and you know to what makes Jack Daniels so unique - I we do make our own barrels - I like the vats the barrels are made of American white oak they're constructed at a cooperage in Louisville Kentucky the barrels are formed from cut and planed wood the wood is steamed so it's pliable then it's shaped just like bourbon Jack Daniel which is a Tennessee whiskey must be aged in the new charred white oak barrel the whiskey's color and a lot of its flavor comes from the barrels themselves the barrels a key ingredient in making a whiskey and it's why jack daniels makes all of its own barrels the right chart takes about 20 to 25 seconds picture marshmallows at a campfire being held just above the top of a flame slowly it starts to turn brown slowly the sugar in flavors and the color changes on the surface of the marshmallow the heads of the barrels are assembled and cut to size [Music] and their chard as well heads are added to the barrels and then hoops are put on we have a head who quarter hoop and a bill shoot so each barrel receives six hoops two of each of those then bung holes are drilled once a barrel makes it onto the truck bound for Lynchburg it'll be filled with whiskey within a week before the wood starts to dry out and shrink I'm gonna start with this one here I spot the bunghole up I took the filler glanced in the bone hole the start of a ski blow each barrel holds about 56 gallons and it takes about a minute to fill that's like a wooden bone place our the hoe with one hit you put the bong in the barrel the barrels will sit for four to seven years to age before being bottled you know you can taste some de chardin it from the barrel some devon metal ice from the barrel so you know it's a very unique whiskey i jack daniels old number seven has been made the same way for 150 years and for connoisseurs around the world they wouldn't want it any other way all those things jack daniels did and dictated that we do and we still do it today what we do differently today is we just do all that a lot better you you

Channel: BRANDMADE.TV

Views: 7,428,578

Rating: 4.8580642 out of 5

Keywords: Jack Daniel's (Distillery), Whisky (Distilled Spirit Type), Food (TV Genre), Manufacturing (Industry), Old South (Location), Tennessee (US State), Made in America, How it's made, Alcohol (Chemical Compound), Whiskey making, Drink (Consumer Product), Tennessee Whiskey (Beverage), Distillation (Invention), whiskey, whisky, Scotch, Bourbon, National Geographic, Discovery Channel, Christmas, Christmas Cheer

Id: V01ME8yNKeY

Length: 7min 48sec (468 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 08 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/signde]

it's a pretty good video i suppose, factually accurate as best i could tell. they left out the part where they add banana flavoring though.

[u/slanderousu]

🍿

[u/DKEH7841]

140 isn’t too high coming off the still, but it’s too high to go to the barrel, correct? They’ve gotta be watering that down a bit or do I have a misunderstanding somewhere in there?

[u/This_Is_BearDog]

12% abv wash/beer is fairly high, isn't it? Isn't it usually around 6-9%?

[u/[deleted]]

We think we make the best whiskey in the world, right here in Lynchburg

you'd be wrong, my friend...