- [Daniel] Maker's Mark is one of the most iconic bourbons around the world. And a lot of their success comes from the drinkability of their product. "Sweet, smooth, no bitterness," they say, it's sort of a bourbon
that everyone can enjoy. What I didn't realize
about the operation was just the amount of manual labor that goes into handling all these barrels and the insane amount of real estate they need to produce the bourbon. So today I'm heading to Loretto, Kentucky to see how Maker's Mark
have kept their product consistent for more than 60 years. First up, I'm heading to the
Independent Stave Company to see how they make custom
barrels for Maker's Mark. One of the rules of bourbon making is that you have to use a brand new white oak barrel every time. So that means a lot of barrels. - So in terms of the cooperage's process, kinda what we're looking at here, this is really the first step. This is called seasoning or air drying. Maker's Mark barrels, they're gonna be a little bit different, right? So they're gonna have
like that nine months, 10, 11, 12 months of seasoning, right? - Okay. - Essentially, we want
to put it in a nutshell, you're gonna get a sweeter mellower, a little bit of a thicker
whiskey out of it. Every single one of Maker's
Mark barrels comes right here. Actually this yard that
you see right here, this is all built specifically for Maker's Mark to house
their longer seasoning. - What happens then to
this wood from here? - So what's gonna happen here, we'll process this wood, it'll be dried, and then it'll go into the cooperage. We'll actually form each stave, we'll form them into a
barrel, we'll char it, we'll send them on down the road. He's got all these
staves being fed to him, one of the thing's he gotta' do, he's gonna pick out the
widest stave that he can find, that's gonna be the bunk stave. Then he's gonna proceed
in the narrow wide, narrow wide pattern all
the way around, right? So not as easy as it looks, it takes about six months to get really, really proficient at this job. So this is pretty much the first time you're gonna see somewhat
of a barrel shape. It'll go down to the steam tunnel. We'll steam in the
barrel for a little bit. It'll soften those wood fibers, and then we'll actually bend
the barrel into its shape. - [Daniel] After the barrels
are steamed and shaped, ISC slides on their hoops, logos them up, and then sends them to the
char machine where they are blasted up to char level three of four, which is how Maker's likes 'em. From here, ISC stores them for a while, and then sends them over to Maker's Mark, where they will be filled with White Dog, or clear bourbon that
has yet to see a barrel. To start the bourbon making process, Makers' Mark gets eight trucks a day of corn, barley and wheat, which they will combine with water from their lake and turn into one of the world's most famous bourbons. - [Denny] You know, the
first step of making whiskey, once you've sourced the
grains from the local farmers is you got to grind that grain up. - [Daniel] Okay. - [Denny] Right, you can't
just use a whole kernel, you have to grind it up. - [Daniel] Right. - [Denny] So all the grain
that we're gonna process, - [Daniel] All the grain, all of it, okay. - [Denny] To the distillery,
corn, wheat, malted barley, - [Daniel] Right. - Will all get ground up in a roller mill. And then we're gonna prep it for mashing, which is where the batch process starts, which are these tanks
right behind us here. The job of the mash cooker basically is to release the flavor
that's in the grain and convert all that starch to fermentable sugar. - [Daniel] In your time here,
have you changed any element of that, or has it been
the exact same forever? - It's been the exact same. - [Daniel] Once the mash is cooked and all the sugars are released, the mixture is piped to
a giant open fermentor and combined with yeast. - [Denny] This is a fermentor
that was just filled. We've added the yeast. Well, typically it takes two to four hours for that yeast to get acclimated to the new environment - [Daniel] Right. - [Denny] To where it'll
start eating the sugar and converting it into alcohol. - [Daniel] From here, the
mixture will bubble away for about three days or until the yeast has eaten all the sugar and turned it into alcohol. - [Denny] So this is one that is probably about two to four hours
away from distillation. What you can see is one, it's
got a very heavy grain cap. - [Daniel] So is it really as simple as the second the bubbling
stops, you want to drain it? - For the most part, yeah. I mean with fermentation,
it's pretty easy to tell just by sight where it is in the process and whether or not things
are close to being completed. - [Daniel] Next, the
fermentors are drained and sent to one of the
distilleries copper stills, which use a series of plates
and steam at about 216 degrees to carry the alcohol up as vapor and drop all of the solids down below. From here, the alcohol vapor is cooled back down into a liquid state forming what is called white dog or a high proof distillate, ready to be aged in a barrel. So this is Maker's Mark. - Yeah, this is Maker's distillate - [Daniel] High proof. - Yup, 130 proof. - [Daniel] 130 proof. - [Denny] 65%. All distilled spirits are gonna come off distilled
looking just like vodka, right? So it's the barrel that's
gonna give it all of its color and then obviously a lot
of its flavors as well. - Right, at the cooperage they said that the secret to Maker's
Mark flavor was the barrel. - Yeah. I know Andrew very well. And that's exactly
something Andrew would say. He'd like to believe that he has that much impact on Maker's. - Right - Andrew's a good friend of mine. Everybody's always asking, you know, what's the percent impact from the barrel. I don't know that that
could truly be quantified. Cause there's so many
things that go into it. - Well we can know because
we can taste it right now. - Yeah, you can taste it, yeah. - All right well cheers. - Yeah, cheers. - [Daniel] It's kind of good. It's got like a lot of vanilla and grain. - Right, so this will get cut to 110 proof and then put in one of
those brand new oak barrels. - [Daniel] What do those barrels cost you? - I don't want to get too
much into that, but I mean, they're gonna be upwards a
hundred, $200 easy for them. - Oh my God, so like when
you buy a bottle of Maker's, there's, you're buying some stuff. - Yeah, it's not, it's not
cheap making good whiskey. I can tell you that. - [Daniel] Next it's time
to head to the filling line to see our freshly distilled
white dog get put into barrels. - So this truck is coming from Independent Stave in Lebanon, Kentucky. These are the new white oak barrels that they produce for us. - [Daniel] So these are the
ones we just saw get made. - [Shawn] Yes sir. - [Daniel] Cool. - [Shawn] And so from there, what we're gonna do is visually inspect these barrels for any quality defects. So you can see here from
that visual inspection, I told you about, - Yeah. - This barrel has a cracked head here. - Okay. - [Daniel] See that
crack down through there. It's at the very bottom of the barrel. - Right. - [Shawn] This is gonna
open all the liquid, it's gonna leak. - Oh, wow. - So I'm not gonna put liquid in it, I'm gonna send it back
for the, to replace that. - This is the kind of thing
you wouldn't even notice just looking at the barrel now. - [Shawn] That grain's
gonna be, have a nod in it. you could lose your liquid. So anything we're not gonna chance, right. - Yeah. - We want a good quality
barrel and ISC always. - It's a big investment,
it's real estate, it's time, - Absolutely - It's a lot of whiskey. Now it's finally time to fill
the barrels with white dog. All right you wanna let me. - Sure. - Do some of your work there. - Do you want to fill
or you want to bottle? - I'll f*****...let me at 'em. - You do it all, all right. - What's the worst that
can happen, you know, - You can get soaked. - Okay. - That would be the worst. - You were very quick to say that. - Yeah, you can get soaked. - That's okay, I mean a little. - I don't know if you got like a change of clothes or something. You're gonna hit your foot pedal. - [Daniel] Yep. - [Shawn] You're gonna row. You want the bung to be like that. - Yep. - You're gonna hit start one time. It's gonna start bringing it down. You're gonna hit start
again, it starts it. Might want to get out of here, we'll take off from you. There you go. - [Daniel] Uh-oh, all right. - [Shawn] There it comes. (hammering) - Foot pedal? - You keep your pedal away to release it. Now you can roll it on. Peace, bro. You got it. - Is this all of the
Maker's Mark in the world is going out through these two pumps? - [Shawn] Yep. - [Daniel] All right, let's roll. From here, the barrels are trucked off to one of Maker's 46 giant warehouses. Shawn says they actually
have over 1 million barrels in storage at any given time. And I'm kind of blown away thinking about the constant investment and organization that goes into managing
an inventory like that. Also schlepping the barrels
around the warehouse is definitely the most physical
aspect of the operation. Shawn can anything go wrong? - [Shawn] No, I mean, you just, yeah. Stop. The biggest risk that we
have in the warehouse, oddly is gonna be your hands. Look at all these pinch points. So you're just gonna take, and you're kind of hold onto this chime and you're gonna just kind
of direct that barrel. Give it a good push, you got it. - All right, so I guess after
like a million of these, you get really jacked and then you hit the beach and game over. - I guess so, I've never
really been able to, I've been more office setting, so. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - [Daniel] It's also not cold in here. - [Shawn] Yeah. It's really hot. (upbeat music) - So now these hang out for how long. - [Shawn] Five and a half to seven years. - There are a bunch of steps left to get the bourbon into the bottles. But now I get to try some of
the cask strength Maker's, which is just Maker's
before they add lake water to bring it down to 90 proof. - [Jacklyn] All right, so, if you'll hold this for me real quick, what we got to do in order
to get this bung out, we've gotta hammer around the area and hopefully it's gonna pop out, so. (hammer hits) Ooh, one shot. - That seemed like you had it set up. - Well, you know, I'm
just really good at this. (upbeat music) Liquid gold. - [Daniel] All right, this is, yeah. (laughing) Cheers, thank you. - [Jacklyn] Cheers. - [Host] Wow. - Tastes better in a
warehouse, doesn't it? - It's still isn't bitter. Like I thought because
it wasn't filtered yet. You maybe get some more harsh notes. - No, I mean, that's, we work hard to keep bitterness out of the process. - [Daniel] Right. Now it's
time to get the whiskey out of the barrels with even
more fun barrel technology. I love barrels. I love rolling barrels, this is the best. All right, this is (bleep)
fricking cool, you know. - [Shawn] So you take
and then roll that barrel onto the track, just
watch your hands on top. There you go. There you go give it a good kick. - Hell yeah. - [Shawn] You got it. - I did lots of origami as a child, so I'm pretty good with my hands. - [Shawn] You've loaded the barrels on the line and now it's gonna come over here to the
bungs, drill bung, debung, is what we call it. And as you see there, you
just drills the bung out. And it puts your aerator in. - Oh, okay, cool. So that's like a, a straw when you're trying to chug a beer out of a bottle. - [Shawn] Right. (drilling) - [Daniel] It's a lot more,
this one's more intimidating. Cause this thing comes down heavy. (drilling) Oh whoa, they come right back. Hell yeah. - This length of this dwell lines, given it plenty opportunity to evacuate all the liquid that was in it. - [Daniel] So what's this,
this is all the loose char from in the barrels that comes out? - [Shawn] Yes. In that barrel there's
still some saturation of whiskey in that barrel. So you want to wash it out, rinse it out and get some of that
additional liquor out of it. - [Daniel] The empty
barrels are now loaded with more lake water and sent to this massive 80 degrees storage facility to sweat the rest of the
whiskey out of the wood. After about four weeks,
the barrels are drained and this sort of whiskey water is used to cut the product
down from 120 to 90 proof. The final product is then sent over to the bottling plant. The bottles actually come in, in the same boxes that they're gonna be shipped out in. - [Roy] Yeah, so they're
gonna flip it onto the line. So they're all in upside down, they'll go right onto the bottling line. First process is gonna be rinsing, Where we actually shoot
about a shot's worth of Maker's at really high pressure inside, to rinse and sanitize the bottle. - [Daniel] After a tiny bit of whiskey is sacrificed to clean
the inside of the glass, they are finally ready to get loaded up with Maker's Mark bourbon. From here, the bottles are capped off, labeled, and then sent over
for the famous red wax dip. - [Roy] Probably one of
the most iconic pieces to our package is that
red wax seal at the top. So every drip is a little bit different. Everyone has their own little style to it and kind of how, how their
bottles tend to end up. - [Daniel] It's pretty mesmerizing. - It is, isn't it? - [Daniel] Do you get a kick
out of seeing them in stores? - Yeah, but a lot of time
when we go to stores, we're inspecting the quality to see how they look on the shelves. - When someone first starts, how can you tell them
their wax isn't as good? - You don't have as many
drips coming down the front. - [Daniel] You want more drips? - [Worker] Yes. - [Daniel] What do you think of these different wax jobs here? What do you like in your, in your dip? - [Roy] My personal preference, I like a little bit longer dip. So like, I liked that one. - [Daniel] Yeah. - [Roy] I do like the drips. This is one some people don't like, I don't mind it if it goes down, again, it's just something different. This was done, a couple really heavy hand. - [Daniel] That's a heavy hand there. That's you know, wax is money, right? (laughing) - Hey. - [Daniel] Finished bottles
are finally boxed up and sent out to the world. The last step for me today is to try some of the final whiskey with
master distiller, Denny Potter. - [Denny] And I think the
hardest thing for all of us, you put all this time and energy into getting that distillate into the barrel. And then you got to wait for us, on average six years to really figure out whether or not we got it right. I don't know what I'll
be doing in six years. Hopefully I'm still here, but. - [Daniel] Can I pour you a little? - [Denny] Yeah, please. - [Daniel] Cheers. - [Denny] Yeah. - [Daniel] I mean, it just
tastes so different now, having seen everything. Part of me wishes, you were like, oh shit, I got to check
something on this one here. (laughing) - Well, if we've done our job, it's rare that it gets to that point. - [Daniel] It's crazy. Cause
every step is good, right? I mean even the still. - [Denny] It all plays a part, right? I mean, individually, they're all good. And we know what we're looking
for in each individual step. - Right. - But it's all got to come together. And if any of that is off, you're not gonna end up with that. Sweet, smooth, no bitterness. And that's, you know, what we strive for in every
bottle of Maker's Mark. And I think we've been able to do that. - That's how I would
describe my day here today. You know, sweet, smooth, no bitterness. (inspiring music)
That’s a lotta bourbon.