- [Daniel] Maker's Mark is one of the most
iconic bourbons around the world.
And a lot of their success comes
from the drinkability of their product.
"Sweet, smooth, no bitterness," they say,
it's sort of a bourbon that everyone can enjoy.
What I didn't realize about the operation was
just the amount of manual labor that goes
into handling all these barrels
and the insane amount of real estate
they need to produce the bourbon.
So today I'm heading to Loretto, Kentucky
to see how Maker's Mark have kept their product
consistent for more than 60 years.
First up, I'm heading to the Independent Stave Company
to see how they make custom barrels for Maker's Mark.
One of the rules of bourbon making
is that you have to use a brand new
white oak barrel every time.
So that means a lot of barrels.
- So in terms of the cooperage's process,
kinda what we're looking at here,
this is really the first step.
This is called seasoning or air drying.
Maker's Mark barrels, they're gonna be
a little bit different, right?
So they're gonna have like that nine months,
10, 11, 12 months of seasoning, right?
- Okay.
- Essentially, we want to put it in a nutshell,
you're gonna get a sweeter mellower,
a little bit of a thicker whiskey out of it.
Every single one of Maker's Mark barrels comes right here.
Actually this yard that you see right here,
this is all built specifically
for Maker's Mark to house their longer seasoning.
- What happens then to this wood from here?
- So what's gonna happen here,
we'll process this wood, it'll be dried,
and then it'll go into the cooperage.
We'll actually form each stave,
we'll form them into a barrel, we'll char it,
we'll send them on down the road.
He's got all these staves being fed to him,
one of the thing's he gotta' do,
he's gonna pick out the widest stave that he can find,
that's gonna be the bunk stave.
Then he's gonna proceed in the narrow wide,
narrow wide pattern all the way around, right?
So not as easy as it looks,
it takes about six months to get really,
really proficient at this job.
So this is pretty much the first time
you're gonna see somewhat of a barrel shape.
It'll go down to the steam tunnel.
We'll steam in the barrel for a little bit.
It'll soften those wood fibers,
and then we'll actually bend the barrel into its shape.
- [Daniel] After the barrels are steamed and shaped,
ISC slides on their hoops, logos them up,
and then sends them to the char machine where they are
blasted up to char level three of four,
which is how Maker's likes 'em.
From here, ISC stores them for a while,
and then sends them over to Maker's Mark,
where they will be filled with White Dog,
or clear bourbon that has yet to see a barrel.
To start the bourbon making process,
Makers' Mark gets eight trucks a day
of corn, barley and wheat,
which they will combine with water
from their lake and turn into one
of the world's most famous bourbons.
- [Denny] You know, the first step of making whiskey,
once you've sourced the grains from the local farmers
is you got to grind that grain up.
- [Daniel] Okay.
- [Denny] Right, you can't just use a whole kernel,
you have to grind it up.
- [Daniel] Right.
- [Denny] So all the grain that we're gonna process,
- [Daniel] All the grain, all of it, okay.
- [Denny] To the distillery, corn, wheat, malted barley,
- [Daniel] Right.
- Will all get ground up in a roller mill.
And then we're gonna prep it for mashing,
which is where the batch process starts,
which are these tanks right behind us here.
The job of the mash cooker basically
is to release the flavor that's in the grain
and convert all that starch
to fermentable sugar.
- [Daniel] In your time here, have you changed any element
of that, or has it been the exact same forever?
- It's been the exact same.
- [Daniel] Once the mash is cooked
and all the sugars are released,
the mixture is piped to a giant open fermentor
and combined with yeast.
- [Denny] This is a fermentor that was just filled.
We've added the yeast.
Well, typically it takes two to four hours
for that yeast to get acclimated
to the new environment
- [Daniel] Right.
- [Denny] To where it'll start eating the sugar
and converting it into alcohol.
- [Daniel] From here, the mixture will bubble away
for about three days or until
the yeast has eaten all the sugar
and turned it into alcohol.
- [Denny] So this is one that is probably
about two to four hours away from distillation.
What you can see is one, it's got a very heavy grain cap.
- [Daniel] So is it really as simple as
the second the bubbling stops, you want to drain it?
- For the most part, yeah.
I mean with fermentation, it's pretty easy to tell
just by sight where it is in the process
and whether or not things are close to being completed.
- [Daniel] Next, the fermentors are drained
and sent to one of the distilleries copper stills,
which use a series of plates and steam at about 216 degrees
to carry the alcohol up as vapor
and drop all of the solids down below.
From here, the alcohol vapor
is cooled back down into a liquid state
forming what is called white dog
or a high proof distillate,
ready to be aged in a barrel.
So this is Maker's Mark.
- Yeah, this is Maker's distillate
- [Daniel] High proof.
- Yup, 130 proof.
- [Daniel] 130 proof.
- [Denny] 65%. All distilled spirits are
gonna come off distilled looking just like vodka, right?
So it's the barrel that's gonna give it all of its color
and then obviously a lot of its flavors as well.
- Right, at the cooperage they said
that the secret to Maker's Mark flavor was the barrel.
- Yeah. I know Andrew very well.
And that's exactly something Andrew would say.
He'd like to believe that
he has that much impact on Maker's.
- Right
- Andrew's a good friend of mine.
Everybody's always asking, you know,
what's the percent impact from the barrel.
I don't know that that could truly be quantified.
Cause there's so many things that go into it.
- Well we can know because we can taste it right now.
- Yeah, you can taste it, yeah.
- All right well cheers.
- Yeah, cheers.
- [Daniel] It's kind of good.
It's got like a lot of vanilla and grain.
- Right, so this will get cut to 110 proof
and then put in one of those brand new oak barrels.
- [Daniel] What do those barrels cost you?
- I don't want to get too much into that, but I mean,
they're gonna be upwards a hundred, $200 easy for them.
- Oh my God, so like when you buy a bottle of Maker's,
there's, you're buying some stuff.
- Yeah, it's not, it's not cheap making good whiskey.
I can tell you that.
- [Daniel] Next it's time to head to the filling line
to see our freshly distilled white dog get put into barrels.
- So this truck is coming from
Independent Stave in Lebanon, Kentucky.
These are the new white oak barrels
that they produce for us.
- [Daniel] So these are the ones we just saw get made.
- [Shawn] Yes sir.
- [Daniel] Cool.
- [Shawn] And so from there,
what we're gonna do is visually inspect
these barrels for any quality defects.
So you can see here from that visual inspection,
I told you about,
- Yeah.
- This barrel has a cracked head here.
- Okay.
- [Daniel] See that crack down through there.
It's at the very bottom of the barrel.
- Right.
- [Shawn] This is gonna open all the liquid,
it's gonna leak.
- Oh, wow.
- So I'm not gonna put liquid in it,
I'm gonna send it back for the, to replace that.
- This is the kind of thing you wouldn't even notice
just looking at the barrel now.
- [Shawn] That grain's gonna be, have a nod in it.
you could lose your liquid.
So anything we're not gonna chance, right.
- Yeah.
- We want a good quality barrel and ISC always.
- It's a big investment, it's real estate, it's time,
- Absolutely
- It's a lot of whiskey.
Now it's finally time to fill the barrels with white dog.
All right you wanna let me.
- Sure.
- Do some of your work there.
- Do you want to fill or you want to bottle?
- I'll f*****...let me at 'em.
- You do it all, all right.
- What's the worst that can happen, you know,
- You can get soaked.
- Okay.
- That would be the worst.
- You were very quick to say that.
- Yeah, you can get soaked.
- That's okay, I mean a little.
- I don't know if you got like
a change of clothes or something.
You're gonna hit your foot pedal.
- [Daniel] Yep.
- [Shawn] You're gonna row.
You want the bung to be like that.
- Yep.
- You're gonna hit start one time.
It's gonna start bringing it down.
You're gonna hit start again, it starts it.
Might want to get out of here,
we'll take off from you.
There you go.
- [Daniel] Uh-oh, all right.
- [Shawn] There it comes.
(hammering)
- Foot pedal?
- You keep your pedal away to release it.
Now you can roll it on.
Peace, bro.
You got it.
- Is this all of the Maker's Mark in the world
is going out through these two pumps?
- [Shawn] Yep.
- [Daniel] All right, let's roll.
From here, the barrels are trucked off
to one of Maker's 46 giant warehouses.
Shawn says they actually have over 1 million barrels
in storage at any given time.
And I'm kind of blown away thinking about
the constant investment and organization
that goes into managing an inventory like that.
Also schlepping the barrels around the warehouse
is definitely the most physical aspect of the operation.
Shawn can anything go wrong?
- [Shawn] No, I mean, you just, yeah.
Stop.
The biggest risk that we have in the warehouse,
oddly is gonna be your hands.
Look at all these pinch points.
So you're just gonna take,
and you're kind of hold onto this chime
and you're gonna just kind of direct that barrel.
Give it a good push, you got it.
- All right, so I guess after like a million of these,
you get really jacked and then you
hit the beach and game over.
- I guess so, I've never really been able to,
I've been more office setting, so.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [Daniel] It's also not cold in here.
- [Shawn] Yeah. It's really hot.
(upbeat music)
- So now these hang out for how long.
- [Shawn] Five and a half to seven years.
- There are a bunch of steps left
to get the bourbon into the bottles.
But now I get to try some of the cask strength Maker's,
which is just Maker's before they add lake water
to bring it down to 90 proof.
- [Jacklyn] All right, so, if you'll hold
this for me real quick,
what we got to do in order to get this bung out,
we've gotta hammer around the area
and hopefully it's gonna pop out, so.
(hammer hits)
Ooh, one shot.
- That seemed like you had it set up.
- Well, you know, I'm just really good at this.
(upbeat music)
Liquid gold.
- [Daniel] All right, this is, yeah.
(laughing)
Cheers, thank you.
- [Jacklyn] Cheers.
- [Host] Wow.
- Tastes better in a warehouse, doesn't it?
- It's still isn't bitter.
Like I thought because it wasn't filtered yet.
You maybe get some more harsh notes.
- No, I mean, that's, we work hard
to keep bitterness out of the process.
- [Daniel] Right. Now it's time to get the whiskey out
of the barrels with even more fun barrel technology.
I love barrels.
I love rolling barrels, this is the best.
All right, this is (bleep) fricking cool, you know.
- [Shawn] So you take and then roll that barrel
onto the track, just watch your hands on top.
There you go.
There you go give it a good kick.
- Hell yeah.
- [Shawn] You got it.
- I did lots of origami as a child,
so I'm pretty good with my hands.
- [Shawn] You've loaded the barrels
on the line and now it's gonna
come over here to the bungs, drill bung, debung,
is what we call it.
And as you see there, you just drills the bung out.
And it puts your aerator in.
- Oh, okay, cool. So that's like a,
a straw when you're trying to chug
a beer out of a bottle.
- [Shawn] Right.
(drilling)
- [Daniel] It's a lot more, this one's more intimidating.
Cause this thing comes down heavy.
(drilling)
Oh whoa, they come right back.
Hell yeah.
- This length of this dwell lines,
given it plenty opportunity
to evacuate all the liquid that was in it.
- [Daniel] So what's this, this is all the loose char
from in the barrels that comes out?
- [Shawn] Yes.
In that barrel there's still some saturation
of whiskey in that barrel.
So you want to wash it out, rinse it out
and get some of that additional liquor out of it.
- [Daniel] The empty barrels are now loaded
with more lake water and sent to
this massive 80 degrees storage facility
to sweat the rest of the whiskey out of the wood.
After about four weeks, the barrels are drained
and this sort of whiskey water
is used to cut the product down from 120 to 90 proof.
The final product is then sent over
to the bottling plant.
The bottles actually come in,
in the same boxes that they're
gonna be shipped out in.
- [Roy] Yeah, so they're gonna flip it onto the line.
So they're all in upside down,
they'll go right onto the bottling line.
First process is gonna be rinsing,
Where we actually shoot about a shot's worth
of Maker's at really high pressure inside,
to rinse and sanitize the bottle.
- [Daniel] After a tiny bit of whiskey
is sacrificed to clean the inside of the glass,
they are finally ready to get loaded up
with Maker's Mark bourbon.
From here, the bottles are capped off,
labeled, and then sent over for the famous red wax dip.
- [Roy] Probably one of the most iconic pieces
to our package is that red wax seal at the top.
So every drip is a little bit different.
Everyone has their own little style to it
and kind of how, how their bottles tend to end up.
- [Daniel] It's pretty mesmerizing.
- It is, isn't it?
- [Daniel] Do you get a kick out of seeing them in stores?
- Yeah, but a lot of time when we go to stores,
we're inspecting the quality to see
how they look on the shelves.
- When someone first starts,
how can you tell them their wax isn't as good?
- You don't have as many drips coming down the front.
- [Daniel] You want more drips?
- [Worker] Yes.
- [Daniel] What do you think
of these different wax jobs here?
What do you like in your, in your dip?
- [Roy] My personal preference,
I like a little bit longer dip.
So like, I liked that one.
- [Daniel] Yeah.
- [Roy] I do like the drips.
This is one some people don't like,
I don't mind it if it goes down,
again, it's just something different.
This was done, a couple really heavy hand.
- [Daniel] That's a heavy hand there.
That's you know, wax is money, right?
(laughing)
- Hey.
- [Daniel] Finished bottles are finally boxed up
and sent out to the world.
The last step for me today is to try some
of the final whiskey with master distiller, Denny Potter.
- [Denny] And I think the hardest thing for all of us,
you put all this time and energy into
getting that distillate into the barrel.
And then you got to wait for us,
on average six years to really figure out
whether or not we got it right.
I don't know what I'll be doing in six years.
Hopefully I'm still here, but.
- [Daniel] Can I pour you a little?
- [Denny] Yeah, please.
- [Daniel] Cheers.
- [Denny] Yeah.
- [Daniel] I mean, it just tastes so different now,
having seen everything.
Part of me wishes, you were like,
oh shit, I got to check something on this one here.
(laughing)
- Well, if we've done our job,
it's rare that it gets to that point.
- [Daniel] It's crazy. Cause every step is good, right?
I mean even the still.
- [Denny] It all plays a part, right?
I mean, individually, they're all good.
And we know what we're looking for in each individual step.
- Right.
- But it's all got to come together.
And if any of that is off,
you're not gonna end up with that.
Sweet, smooth, no bitterness.
And that's, you know,
what we strive for in every bottle of Maker's Mark.
And I think we've been able to do that.
- That's how I would describe my day here today.
You know, sweet, smooth, no bitterness.
(inspiring music)