Preview: New Beam Visitor Center

[cowdery]

I don't know anything about it, except Troy Beam posted this on Facebook. I may be over by there tomorrow.

[Roadsaw]

Out of curiosity does anyone know where they built this, is it toward the front or the back where the old visitor center is?

[tmckenzie]

I am speculating here, so take it for what it is worth, and there may be something to it by the looks of the building. We are going to put in a 12 beer still and thumper, we were at vendome and the same still was being built for beam but with a doubler. I recken that the still I saw is going in the building. If so, that will be one of the best places to visit.

[macdeffe]

It's close to the current visitor center, adjacent (or closer) to the parking lot behind the visitor warehouse

Steffen

[Bourbon Boiler]

I'll be there in two weeks, hopefully if it's not apparant, one of their well educated tour guides can answer the question.

[OscarV]

Four Roses also has a new Visitors Center under construction.

Here is a blurb from their website.

Construction underway at new Visitors Center

The new Visitors Center and Gift Shop at the Four Roses Distillery are due to open in mid-September 2012. Yes, that’s just in time for the Kentucky Bourbon Festival!

If you’ve never visited Kentucky during the Kentucky Bourbon Festival, you should plan your visit this year. And make sure to visit the new Four Roses Bourbon Visitors Center on your way to Bardstown!

[boone]

It's located behind the Outpost-Beam home. It is due open in September. My daughter Erica got her business degree and has been employed at the Outpost as a tour guide for just a little over a year

[wadewood]

http://www.alcademics.com/2012/07/a-sneak-peak-at-jim-beams-new-visitors-center.html

I follow this blog and he just posted about this with a few pictures.

[Bourbon Boiler]

As much as we ignore Beam products here, it's good to see that the biggest name in Bourbon finally appears to be taking its presence on the trail a little more seriously.

[cowdery]

I did take a look. It is where described, directly behind the Jere Beam House, but at a ground level several feet lower. They've done a tremendous amount of infrastructure in addition to the new building, including a new (additional) visitors parking lot and a new road that probably will be the tourism entrance when everything is finished. They're also enlarging their office building where you first come in at the current entrance. We have an inside agent who worked on some of the construction who tells us that you will be behind glass when you are shown the main still. One person in the know described it to me as Bourbon Disneyland.

[dsorrent]

They are also creating a new tasting room so they can move tastings out of the Master Distiller's home. The new tasting room is going to be in the room where the bathrooms are in the red barn that is across from the Master Distiller's home. I believe they said it should be open roughly around the same time as the new visitors center.

[cowdery]

They've always talked about being ready to open for this year's festival, which is just a month away. Based on what I saw in July, that seems unlikely. The new Visitor Center is just a shell and they haven't done a thing to the old Visitor Center except some painting of the exterior. They do have the new road finished and open, which is impressive. One weird thing, though, was I couldn't seem to find Chapese.

[BourbonJoe]

The last time I was there (about 3 weeks ago) there were no tastings in the Beam home. They had a little bar set up in the mercantile barn.

Joe :usflag:

[dsorrent]

The last time I was there (about 3 weeks ago) there were no tastings in the Beam home. They had a little bar set up in the mercantile barn.

Joe :usflag:

[cowdery]

I was there about the same time Joe was. Didn't do the tasting but saw them tasting in the barn. It may be a crowd size and capacity thing. They may be using both. I know all of the distilleries are crying because they just don't have the infrastructure to support to volume of visitors they're getting. I suspect Beam will have to immediately start a new project to buffer capacity even as they open their new center, since I'm sure when it was planned they didn't anticipate the growth that has, in fact, occurred.

High class problem.

[dsorrent]

Took me a bit to go through my photos. Here's a panoramic video at the Jim Beam Distillery. About 0:04-0:08 in the video pans by a red building which is to be the new tasting center.

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/qEfNwU1k-N0rOmUK-WjK-a-D-3OrLHXBJ8JpwgfHiKc?feat=directlink

Here's two photo's I took inside of it. The top one you can see in the background that it is still "under construction":

[boone]

Hi Chuck! Erica has been working very hard preparing for the grand opening of the "American Stillhouse"....All moved in ~ practice runs this week in which she calls a "soft opening". The official opening will be BF week.

[tmckenzie]

Did they put that small beer still in the building?

[Bourbon Boiler]

I don't know who made it this week, but I was very impressed with both the "museum" and the tasting room. I got there right at closing time today, so I didn't really get a good look around, but I got a couple of tastes from the automated sample dispensers.

[RickWrightson]

I was there last month (actually at a business meeting with the Beam American Supplier Manager - who took us through the visitor center). The whole visitor experience is very nicely done. However, I have my own question regarding a display there; they have a display that shows the Angel's Share that occurs over time i.e. 1 year, 4 years, 9 years. I took a photo but the backlit barrel that depicts the remaining level of whiskey after the evaporation is washed out due the backlighting. I thought it was a great graphic to show the evaporation but can't remember the numbers. Does anyone know the actual level that is shown in the display? I've enclosed the photo. Thanks

[squire]

Good first post Rick, welcome aboard.