May 16, 2018 Lynchburg, Tennessee

90's and partly cloudy, rainy.

We toured the Jack Daniels distillery today. Every drop made right here, Welcome to the source. What you can and cannot bring on the tour. Downtown Lynchburg you can get Jack Daniels ice cream and candy, the toilet in the JD visitors center, an old crock of JD, statue of Jack Daniels. He was 5’2” and dressed as a businessman in a suit every day. There is a JD fire brigade at the plant. There was an exhibit of some vintage fire engines. visit Lynchburg, the Jack Daniels trail sippin’ to saddles, the visitors center, Every day we make it we’ll make it the best we can, a display in the museum of making JD, sign that says danger snapping turtles and snakes in area, stay away from the water and do not feed the wildlife.

A photo of the distillery, and an  old photo of the work crew. Jack Daniels is the guy wearing the white hat, he is the only one standing in the photo, everyone else is seated. Next to him is George Green, who is Nathan ‘Nearest’ Green.  Before the civil war Jack was hired to work with the enslaved Nearest on Rev Call’s still. Nearest taught Jack how to make whisky. After the Civil war Rev Call sold Jack the still and Jack hired Nearest to be his chief distiller. One of the Barrel Houses. We could not take photos or use cell phones where they actually distilled the whiskey because 140 proof fumes were in the air and they did not want to spark off a fire. So no photos of that. 

The Rick Yard. JD is filtered through sweet maple charcoal that they make here in the rick yard.  They stack 2 inch strips of maple, burn them under this OSHA approved hood, hose down with water and grind up. They used 140 proof Jack Daniels to light them, they don’t use petroleum products because they don’t want petroleum flavors in the whiskey. Our guide Mike showing a piece of the charcoal in front of a video of the wood burning. The water comes from the Cave Springs. It has no iron it it which will affect the color and has other minerals that add flavor. 

John standing in front of a 55,000 gallons of beer.  After the mash ferments it is beer, that is distilled into the whisky. After the tour we went to historic downtown Lynchburg where the distillery is. The distillery is in a dry county. They can sell the alcohol to go out of state, but no where in the county can you get an alcoholic  drink. Very touristy downtown souvenirs and BBQ places.  We had lunch at a BBQ joint.

The bottling area at the distillery. John at a soda fountain in town getting a malt and drinking it in a huge Jack Daniels rocking chair made from the left over oak fermenting barrels. My latest masterpiece in progress.  It has a kokopelli in the center with turquoise magnetite, red coral, and amethyst gem chips around it, red glass beads and will have those large turquoise magnetite beads between the wrapped coil and the basket.