Brewers vs Reds in Cincinnati 2010

Kevin slept the whole way while I drove, so I don't know why he was so tired. Oh yeah I do - because it was the complete opposite. It's only an 8 hour drive, but when you don't sleep at night the heaviness has a way of catching up to you in the morning. Time to nap and rally.

We were the only patrons there on that Friday morning and nothing was open yet, so we just wandered around on our own. Somehow I ended up on top of some barrels. If I wasn't so tired as well, I would've started throwing them at Kevin like I was Donkey Kong.

We were the first and only people to sign up for the 9:00am tour of Jim Beam distillery, and Kevin sat at the entrance to the gift shop/tour center to make sure no one else could join us if they showed up. As much as I value the company of others I didn't mind that it would just be Kevin, the Tour Guide and I strolling around the grounds learning about history and the making of fine Kentucky bourbon. In the house that the Beam family used to live in (from the previous page) they have many historical artifacts including this scale model of a whiskey distillery that actually has the capability of producing alcohol. That's right you can make booze with this thing. You might only be able to make enough to get Tinkerbell drunk (so you can have your way with her, except I don't know how that would work but hey - it could happen right?) but booze is booze people.

Since this was somebody's house they hung pictures of their family on the walls. The guy on the left is some old dude and the woman on the left was probably his wife or mistress or some shit. Look guys I have no idea who these people are. I didn't work with them, they never gave me a ride somewhere and they never chaperoned one of my school dances. I have to assume they were part of the Beam Family or else they wouldn't be here. I'm making this up as I go along. I didn't pay attention in October 2010 on the tour and I sure as hell don't feel like looking it up now.

Kevin and I sat in rather lavish surroundings while we watched a video about the history of the Beam family and how their grew their trade from just a few barrels a year to the massive empire that it has become. It was actually pretty interesting because despite being massed produced nowadays, Jim Beam Whiskey is pretty much still made today as it was 200 years ago. When then started touring the grounds and got a very personalized tour. Since it was just me and Kevin we got to ask all of the questions and didn't have to sit through the dumb ones idiots ask.

Each rack house holds around 20,000 barrels of whiskey and is something like 9 stories tall. Now that's a shit ton of whiskey if you ask me. But when you consider that whiskey has to age for at least 4 years minimum before being ready to be consumed then it makes sense that you would need a lot of space to house all of it. The pictures don't really do it justice, but being in this massive barn with countless giant barrels of whiskey was quite daunting. How do they keep track of all of this stock and know which style it is and how long it has been aging? That's a lot of stuff to keep track of, and I don't envy the dude who has to figure that out. I'm sure they have a system, but I don't want any part of that shit.