The rickhouses are located at 3600 McCracken Pike in Woodford County near the Franklin County line, on the property of the currently defunct Old Crow Distillery. The rickhouses on the property are still used to age Jim Beam products. The fire was first reported around 11:30 p.m. Tuesday. Firefighters initially got the fire under control, but then it rekindled and eventually caught another rickhouse on fire. Initial suspicions are that the fire was caused by a lightning strike.

 

Jim Beam has reported that the buildings lost contained approximately 45,000 barrels of bourbon. No word from Beam on what the exact product label was contained in the two rickhouses.

 

Back in June of 2018 there was a bourbon rickhouse on the Barton property in Bardstown collapsed spilling approximately 9,500 of its 20,000 aging barrels of 1792 bourbon. Then the remainder of the rickhouse collapsed in July.

 

Then this past March at the Barton distillery, they had a tank collapse into another tank, spilling the 120,000 gallons of fermenting mash contained in both.

 

It's been a bad stretch of give-or-take 12 months for bourbon.

 

Do we have any sense of how much whiskey this is out of all the stock for particular years? Is the industry legitimately going to have to think about an inventory issue and pricing a few years from now?

As sir Charles would say, this is turrrible.

Do we have any sense of how much whiskey this is out of all the stock for particular years? Is the industry legitimately going to have to think about an inventory issue and pricing a few years from now?

 

A quick google search found that in 2006 Jim Beam was producing 500,000 barrels a year. So this would be a little less than 10% of one year's run.

Do we have any sense of how much whiskey this is out of all the stock for particular years? Is the industry legitimately going to have to think about an inventory issue and pricing a few years from now?

 

Came across some basic info from kybourbon.com with a quick Google search. In 2017 there were 1.7 million barrels of bourbon produced in Kentucky, which brought the total stock of bourbon barrels in the state to 8.1 million.

 

Using some generalities of the figures we know:

 

First we need to do a little extrapolation. Very generally speaking, a gallon of mash produces about 1/3 of its volume in actual alcohol product. The 120,000 gallons of spilled mash at Barton would convert to about 36,000 gallons of whisky. At 53 gallons per barrel, that means that entire 120,000 gallon spill would have produced about 680 barrels of bourbon, total. (Holy moley, that's a crazy figure!)

 

Kentucky produces approximately 1.7 million barrels per year, and has 8.1 million barrels total of bourbon inventory.

 

There were 20 thousand barrels in the Barton rickhouse loss, and 680 (we'll be generous and call that a thousand) barrels in the Barton tank spill.

 

There were 45 thousand barrels in the Jim Beam rickhouse fire last night.

 

45,000 + 21,000 = 66,000 barrels

66,000 barrels = 3.9% of the total 1.7 million barrel annual production

66,000 barrels = 0.81% of the 8.1 million barrel total inventory

 

Obviously, none of those figures are exact, or account for the angel's share, or take into account what age the product was, or how much variance there has been in bourbon production in the years aside from 2017.

Came across some basic info from kybourbon.com with a quick Google search. In 2017 there were 1.7 million barrels of bourbon produced in Kentucky, which brought the total stock of bourbon barrels in the state to 8.1 million.

 

Using some generalities of the figures we know:

 

First we need to do a little extrapolation. Very generally speaking, a gallon of mash produces about 1/3 of its volume in actual alcohol product. The 120,000 gallons of spilled mash at Barton would convert to about 36,000 gallons of whisky. At 53 gallons per barrel, that means that entire 120,000 gallon spill would have produced about 680 barrels of bourbon, total. (Holy moley, that's a crazy figure!)

 

Kentucky produces approximately 1.7 million barrels per year, and has 8.1 million barrels total of bourbon inventory.

 

There were 20 thousand barrels in the Barton rickhouse loss, and 680 (we'll be generous and call that a thousand) barrels in the Barton tank spill.

 

There were 45 thousand barrels in the Jim Beam rickhouse fire last night.

 

45,000 + 21,000 = 66,000 barrels

66,000 barrels = 3.9% of the total 1.7 million barrel annual production

66,000 barrels = 0.81% of the 8.1 million barrel total inventory

 

Obviously, none of those figures are exact, or account for the angel's share, or take into account what age the product was, or how much variance there has been in bourbon production in the years aside from 2017.

 

The Barton rickhouse collapse last year is the most interesting from this standpoint because it put a massive hole in the entire future supply of 1792.

This is less than 10 minutes from my mom's house in Frankfort. Driven by it literally hundreds of times.

 

I get the nostalgia and whatnot from these old rick houses, but these companies need to start updating their storage facilities. There's way too much technology available for this to keep happening.

Came across some basic info from kybourbon.com with a quick Google search. In 2017 there were 1.7 million barrels of bourbon produced in Kentucky, which brought the total stock of bourbon barrels in the state to 8.1 million.

 

Using some generalities of the figures we know:

 

First we need to do a little extrapolation. Very generally speaking, a gallon of mash produces about 1/3 of its volume in actual alcohol product. The 120,000 gallons of spilled mash at Barton would convert to about 36,000 gallons of whisky. At 53 gallons per barrel, that means that entire 120,000 gallon spill would have produced about 680 barrels of bourbon, total. (Holy moley, that's a crazy figure!)

 

Kentucky produces approximately 1.7 million barrels per year, and has 8.1 million barrels total of bourbon inventory.

 

There were 20 thousand barrels in the Barton rickhouse loss, and 680 (we'll be generous and call that a thousand) barrels in the Barton tank spill.

 

There were 45 thousand barrels in the Jim Beam rickhouse fire last night.

 

45,000 + 21,000 = 66,000 barrels

66,000 barrels = 3.9% of the total 1.7 million barrel annual production

66,000 barrels = 0.81% of the 8.1 million barrel total inventory

 

Obviously, none of those figures are exact, or account for the angel's share, or take into account what age the product was, or how much variance there has been in bourbon production in the years aside from 2017.

 

This is incredible. 66k barrels sounds like a lot, and I'm sure it is to the individual companies. But crazy how little it is in the grand scheme of Kentucky bourbon.

A couple of weeks ok, O.Z. Tyler in Owensboro had a rickhouse partially collapse. They apparently lost about 4,500 barrels due to that, which comparatively is pretty small but as they are a smaller brand that might be substantial to them.

The Barton rickhouse collapse last year is the most interesting from this standpoint because it put a massive hole in the entire future supply of 1792.

 

1792 is bound to be a collector bottle sooner or later. It was originally advertised as an 8 year old bottle, although it's been a while since they have had that on the label. No idea on how old the bourbon in the actual collapsed rickhouse was.

If I remember correctly, Woodford Reserve, which is only about 10 minutes from this Jim Beam facility, have over 225,000 barrels stored at one facility in Woodford County.