Lubbers - Bourbon whiskey: our native spirit: from sour mash to sweet adventures with a whiskey professor

BOURBON
WHISKEY

Our Native Spirit

From Sour Mash to Sweet Adventures
With a Whiskey Professor

Revised Edition

Bernie Lubbers

Bourbon Whiskey 2011 Bernie Lubbers

pISBN: 978-1-93562-825-5

eISBN: 978-1-93562-888-0

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a database or other retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, by any means, including mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Cover designed by Phil Velikan

Editorial assistance provided by Dorothy Chambers

Packaged by Wish Publishing

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

Published by Blue River Press

Distributed by Cardinal Publishers Group

Tom Doherty Company, Inc.

www.cardinalpub.com

To Virgil, David, Steve and the Whiskey Chicks (Sam and Paigeand yes, that means you all, too, Kathleen and Linda)

Whiskey professor Bernie Lubbers and U.S. Vice President Joe Biden.

Table of Contents

Foreword

Bernie asked me to write a foreword for his new book, so I figured I should tell yall just who the hell I am. Im Fred Noe, seventh-generation distiller in the Beam family. My great-grandfather was Jim Beam. Hes the one most people know of since his name is on the bottle, and hes the one who started our distillery again after Prohibition in 1934. Pretty amazing for a guy to restart a whole distillery at 70 years old. But it was his great-grandfather, Jacob Beam, who started our family legacy by distilling and selling his first barrel of whiskey back in 1795. To think our family has stuck in this business for over 200 years is really amazing. Im glad they did, because I dont know what Id be doing otherwise. Its literally and figuratively in my blood.

Fred Noe (courtesy of Beam Global Spirits & Wine)

My dad, Booker Noe (of Bookers Bourbon), taught me all about the business, and I think he was one of the very best. I remember traveling with him on trips where we would promote the small-batch bourbons that Pop created in the early 1990s, actually creating a new category. He taught me not only about distilling, but also how to be a guardian and an ambassador for the brands he created. You see, brands have lives and live on way longer than us human beings. When Dad passed away a few years back, it was just me serving as the ambassador for these brands, and the world was craving more bourbon, more stories, more everything.

I have a son, Freddie, but he needs to get out of college before he can even think about joining the family business. Bourbon is so popular now that we couldnt wait for him to graduate, so we brought in Bernie Lubbers to help promote Knob Creek and our other bourbons. Now Bernies not from a distilling family, but he caught on pretty darn quick. I had heard Bernies name and voice on the Bob & Tom Show radio program in the morning, so I knew hed have a leg up, as a lot of this job is being able to talk to just about any type of person around and to communicate a fairly complicated topic like bourbon.

I guess he had a lot of passion for it since his dad and grandfather worked in a brewery in Louisville, so maybe something rubbed off on him, or poured off on him somewhere along the line. Bourbon is something you dont just learn overnight. It takes yearsreally it takes a life timeand even though theres a lot more for us all to learn, Id say Bernie knows his shit pretty damn good.

Being bourbon ambassadors, we have people who come up to us and tell us that they could do our jobs since they love bourbon. But being an ambassador requires quite a few unique skills. Enjoying bourbon and having bourbon knowledge is a good start, but its just the tip of the iceberg. Youve got to enjoy traveling. And when I say traveling, I mean flying more than 100,000 miles a year, sometimes to several cities in a week. A typical ambassador is gone at least two to three weeks a month. We do staff trainings and educational tastings at bars and restaurants with our sales people during the day. Then we might have a bourbon dinner or other type of consumer event that night. Then there are the whiskey shows, where thousands of people attend to taste their favorite whiskies and try new ones. Drink bourbon all night, all day and night sometimes. The next morning you might have to wake up early and catch a plane to somewhere to do it all again, or maybe be on a morning radio/TV show and look and act fresh, and be the life of the party all over again wherever they take you afterward. But if you can, its a true brotherhood of people, and its a truly incredible ride.

I think Bernies book brings some of that to life for you, and I think youll also learn quite a bit about bourbon, even if you already know a lot about bourbon. Once you finish this book, you may want to come visit us here in Kentucky at our distillery. Come on down and come thirsty and come by and say hey to me and Bernie. If you keep drinking it, Ill keep making it.

Heres lookin at ya.

Fred Noe

John Hansell (Whisky Advocate Magazine) at Binnys Beverage Depot during Chicago Whiskey Fest.

Prologue: Whiskey Professors
Are Born AND Made

The first question that people ask after they find out Im a whiskey professor is, How did you get that job? Well, the truth is that the job came to me. I didnt go after it. I performed stand-up comedy for 20 years, and whiskey professor wasnt on my radar screen. Hell, I didnt even know it existed. But its a career where you use verbal skills and your personality to explain and promote a product, so in many ways, stand-up comedy was a perfect background.

It also may have helped that I grew up in a family in the beer business. My dad worked at a brewery for 45 years, and my grandfather was one of the founders of that brewery. In some ways you could say I grew up under the influence.

For example, every summer we closed our house in Louisville and moved up to a camp my parents owned on the Ohio River in Utica, Indiana. Utica is like that little town in To Kill a Mockingbird but without a lawyer and with more Boo Radleys. Our camp was (and still is) a two-bedroom concrete block house on a slab that my dad built with his friend Evvers Johnson. Nothing luxurious, but it was awesome to us, and best of all we had our own little beach on the river. We would swim, hike, skip rocks, and fish every day. We had a ball. The Fourth of July was the climax of the summer, with fireworks going off all day, and parties, parties, parties.

We knew all of our neighbors along the river we referred to ourselves as the river rats. And river rats are the most friendly and gregarious folk around. Even though Dad went to work every day, it was like a summer vacation for our parents, too.

Beer was a big part of those summers. On weekends, my parents let us take sips of beer when we fetched them one from the house to the beach or patio overlooking the river. Because I had been exposed to beer and adult beverages as a youth, I never went to or threw crazy high school parties like other kids did when their parents went out of town. The idea of playing quarter bounce or anything like that was silly and ridiculous to my siblings and me. The first time we went to a high school party like that, my buddies and I turned around and went home and played pool and poker, and probably drank Mountain Dew or Coke. We never drank beer just to drink beer. It was a nice little treat, but not something you just drank. It just wasnt forbidden fruit at my house, so I really could have taken it or left it.