Welcome to the Jim Beam American Stillhouse! Jim Beam has been creating bourbon for over 200 years, in the pursuit of making the best bourbon in the world.

Interestingly enough, Jim Beam was one of the first distilleries to use charred oak barrels, which is now a requirement for bourbons. This happened because due to the increased demand for bourbon, a result of trains and steamboats being able to ship bourbon far away, distillers found themselves in a barrel shortage. This led them to putting bourbon in used fish and vinegar barrles, which brought about a number of issues. However, people found that burned the inside of the barrels removed the smell and made them suitable for storing whiskey. In addition to that, travel further complicated selling bourbon due to its incredibly slow speeds compared to today. However, this ended up being beneficial, as the bourbon had time to seep into the wood, and absorb some of the sugars which were a result of the charring process. This both gave the bourbon a caramel taste, and better coloring.

However, in the early 1900's, prohibition began, making all of the work the Beam family had done worthless, as alcoholic beverages had become illegal. This was the only time in the 220 year history of Jim Beam that the family was not distilling bourbon. In 1933, though, when prohibition ended, Jim Beam, at the age of 70, rebuilt his distillery in Clearmont, Kentucky in 120 days, with the help of friends and family of course.

Later, just as World War II was coming to a close, T. Jeremiah Beam took over, and decided to start sending cases of Jim Beam bourbon to soldiers stationed overseas. Though this was not his intention, this ended up introducing Jim Beam to the world, allowing it to grow even further.

Jim Beam would face issues later, when bourbon was waning in popularity in favor of things like vodka and gin. Fred Booker Noe II, son of Margaret Beam, and master distiller of another Jim Beam distillery located in Boston, KY, refused to give in, and thus, small batch bourbon was born. This refers to people, starting with Booker, began making bourbon how it was originally made, in small batches. This would be huge for bourbon, and reinvigorate interest in it. In short, Jim Beam is and has been a fixture of bourbon for as long as bourbon as existed, and is well worth a stop on the bourbon trail (all information courtesy of jimbeam.com, image courtesy of Vyn Raskopf, link, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0).