This is Jack, all 5’2″ of him. He ran away from home when he was 5 and got taken in by a pastor where he was taught about making moonshine. He purchased the property in Lynchburg due to its iron free spring water he thought would make the best Tennessee whiskey. This spring is still the source of every drop of Jack Daniel’s produced today.
Corn, barley, rye, yeast and water are left to ferment for 6 days to create sour mash. This gets put into 7-storey tall stills where the alcohol vapour is drawn from the top and condensed ready for charcoal filtering.
We were fortunate enough to catch them making their charcoal from sugar maple, lit using their own 140 proof whiskey to avoid tainting the taste of the end product with petroleum. The raw whiskey is filtered through 10ft of this charcoal, taking 7 days to reach the bottom of the silo.