UPDATE: Buffalo Trace warehouse expansions make progress, addresses demand issues

UPDATE POSTED AUGUST 8, 2021 AT 5:46 P.M.

FRANKFORT, Ky. (WTVQ/Press Release) – More headway has been made on Buffalo Trace Distillery’s $1.2 billion expansion.

Over the past year, improvements have included more barrel warehouses, construction of an additional still, additional fermenters, expanding the dry house operation and more.

The distillery said the expansion is necessary to help bourbon supply catch up with demand.

“The bourbon category continues to grow at a rapid rate, and while we have been increasing production across our portfolio for the last several years, we are still catching up to consumer demand,” said Sara Saunders, vice president of marketing, Buffalo Trace Distillery. “While we are producing and shipping a record amount of product, we understand the frustration from fans that our brands aren’t easy to find or readily available. We take pride in the quality of our product above all else, and we believe that there is no substitute for aging. Unfortunately, this lengthens the lead time of getting product into consumers’ hands.”

In the past year, this National Historic Landmark made headway on a number of projects, including a second still house, located adjacent to Buffalo Trace’s existing 1930’s still house. The addition of a second still house will double the production capacity for the Distillery, with a duplicate still standing 40 feet tall and having the capacity of 60,000 gallons.

Eight additional fermenters were added and went online in January 2021, joining the four new fermenters added in December of 2019 and bringing Buffalo Trace’s total fermenter count to 24.  The new fermenters are 93,000 gallons each, slightly larger than the twelve older fermenters Buffalo Trace still uses, which have been in place since 1933.

One of the construction projects started in the past year involves repurposing the oldest aging barrel warehouse on property, Warehouse B, to a new dry house.

Warehouse B was built in 1884 but has sat empty for two decades after it was determined that it was not ideal for aging the quality whiskey Buffalo Trace requires with today’s rigorous standards.  An all-brick warehouse, its location at the back of the distillery near the cookers and fermenters made it an ideal location for drying spent mash to sell to farmers for livestock feed and it allows the Distillery to repurpose the building while maintaining its historic integrity.

Buffalo Trace’s existing dry house will continue to operate once the new dry house is complete, but the additional dry house is necessary for the increased production. The Distillery’s dry house operations ensure that none of the Distillery’s byproduct goes to waste.

A new cooling system is also underway, which includes mash coolers, chillers and cooling towers, all necessary to cool the mash down after cooking so it can be transferred to fermenters as needed.

The Distillery has broken ground on a $40.0 million wastewater treatment facility, allowing it to be self-sufficient in its treatment of wastewater.  Comprised of a moving bed biofilm reactor, the new treatment facility will allow wastewater to be treated efficiently and maintain water quality standards.

Wastewater will be treated and disinfected clean enough to release into the Penitentiary Branch, which leads to the Kentucky River —ensuring both remain high-quality waters.

New barrel aging warehouses HH, II, and JJ have also been added in the past year and LL and MM are under construction now.  Warehouses KK and NN are in the planning stages.

Since most of Buffalo Trace’s bourbons age eight to 10 years, more warehouses continue to be built as production increases.  A total of 10 new barrel warehouses have been built to date since 2017, each holding 58,800 barrels and costing about $7 million each to build and another $21 million each to fill with barrels.

The progress made over the past year joins previous expansion items as part of Buffalo Trace’s $1.2 billion investment, such as four new 22-foot tall cookers, four new fermenters, a 110,000 square foot bottling hall, and an expanded Visitor Center which triples the size of the former retail, tasting and event space.

Buffalo Trace resumed tours over a year ago after a brief shut down due to COVID-19 and visitation has rapidly picked up pace, while maintaining safety protocols.  Since re-opening last July, Buffalo Trace has seen more than 235,000 visitors, despite some capacity restrictions still in place.

Upcoming infrastructure projects for this 246-year-old Distillery in the near future include a new mill house, which will be located close to the original location of the hammer mill from 80 years ago.  The mill house will increase the grain grinding capacity to match new distillation capacity by replacing the current hammer mills.

Corn, wheat, rye and barley are trucked into Buffalo Trace from various non-GMO farmers in the region, but then must be ground on site before the grains can be used to make bourbon.

More barrel aging warehouses are also planned for the future, as well as another craft bottling hall which will allow Buffalo Trace to produce more single barrel and small batch bourbons.

“We’ve made great strides in our expansion so far, but we still have a long way to go in order to meet the needs of our fans,” said Master Distiller Harlen Wheatley. “We continue to take all the proper steps to ensure every barrel is of the highest quality as we increase supply.”

ORIGINAL STORY POSTED MAY 4, 2021 AT 12:00 P.M.

FRANKLIN COUNTY, Ky. (WTVQ/Press Release) – For the last few years, Buffalo Trace Distillery has been working on its $1.2 billion dollar infrastructure investment, some of which includes new barrel warehouses.

At a capacity of 58,800 barrels each, the addition of 10 new warehouses have given this National Historic Landmark Distillery an on-site barrel inventory of over one million aging whiskey barrels.

Starting in the spring of 2018, Buffalo Trace began filling its first new warehouse located on the adjacent 292-acre farm purchased several years ago.  Since then, barrel warehouses AA through JJ are filled.

Buffalo Trace is currently working on Warehouse MM and will continue to add future warehouses of the same size at a rate of one new warehouse every four months, until further notice.

The new warehouses are seven stories tall, metal clad with insulation. The floors are wooden. Unlike most distilleries, Buffalo Trace heats its warehouses, starting with steam heat Col., E.H. Taylor, Jr. brought to the warehouses he built in the late 1800s, and still used today on Buffalo Trace’s main campus.

The heating system for the new warehouses on the farm is a patented heating system in the floors with dual zones so temperatures in each warehouse can be managed independently.

What the Distillery is most excited about though, is the taste consistency in the new warehouses when compared to Buffalo Trace’s warehouses on its main campus.

“Consistency in a taste profile is much harder to maintain than most people realize,” said Harlen Wheatley, master distiller.  “Any time you bring a new element into the equation, it has the potential to change the result. We’ve worked very hard to ensure our new aging warehouses are consistent in the taste profiles for which Buffalo Trace Distillery is known.  We test all barrels in the new warehouses every 12 months and run them through a full sensory analysis to compare them to our ‘standard’ for that brand at the part in its aging cycle and also compare them against barrels which have been aging the same amount of time in our more established warehouses on our main campus.

“We’re really happy the taste is consistent across the board and look forward to being able to release them once they’ve reached their aging potential. Along the way, we’ll continue to monitor them and run tests as we do with all of our aging barrels to make sure they are meeting or exceeding brand standards of quality.”

Buffalo Trace, well known for its meticulous research and tracking when it comes to its whiskey inside its barrels, has been charting the progress of its new barrel warehouses for various elements, including temperature.

The charts below compare the temperature inside in the first floor of barrel Warehouse AA, a “new” warehouse which holds 58,800 barrels, versus barrel Warehouse S, an “old” warehouse which holds 50,000 barrels, for the same time period, Jan. 1, 2020 through Jan. 1, 2021.

As the chart indicates, temperature fluctuation between the “new” and “old” warehouses is remarkably similar for the same time period.

“It’s reassuring to see the temperature fluctuations over the year remain consistent between the two warehouses, despite the location differences between the two warehouses.  Through the years, we’ve gathered millions of data points on how the environment affects the whiskey inside the barrel. We know, for example, how important heating the warehouses are during the winter months, which is why we committed to continuing that tradition in our new warehouses we’re building.  All of these data points give us great confidence that the bourbon we’re putting up today in our new warehouses will have the consistent flavor profiles our fans have come to expect,” added Wheatley.

Buffalo Trace Distillery is an American family-owned company based in Frankfort, Franklin County, Kentucky. The Distillery’s rich tradition dates back to 1775 and includes such legends as E.H. Taylor, Jr., George T. Stagg, Albert B. Blanton, Orville Schupp, and Elmer T. Lee.  Buffalo Trace Distillery is a fully operational Distillery producing bourbon, rye and vodka on site and is a National Historic Landmark as well as is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.