I recently recieved an article from the Bardstown Whiskey Society and thought I might put it up for everyone to read.  It was written by the Master Distiller Parker Beam himself.

“There’s a machine shop in town where the guys can fix just about any kind of farm machinery you can break.  It’s also a good place to spend a little time becuase you’re always running into someone you know.  Or someone you’re going to get to know.  It’s like a small town barber shop, I guess, except you don’t have to take your hat off.

That’s where I was the other day-having a cup of coffee and wainting to get my hay baler fixed-when it dawned on me you can actually do some of your best work when you’re not even thinking about working.  You see, as a Master Distiller, a big part of my job is making sure Heaven Hill has a reliable source of good quality grains.

And, as you probably guesses by now, my second love is farming.  We raise some cattle and grow some what on a little spread here in Nelson County.  Well this guys comes in with a problem with his tractor and we got to talking about trucks and farming.  He mentioned he had about 500 acres in corn down in the southern part of the state, and that got my full attention.  I figure we use over a million and a half bushels of corn a year at the distillery.  In fact, we have truckloads arriving dailing from all over Kentucky and a great majority from Indiana. 

He filled me in on his opertation and I told him about our needs at Heaven Hill.  He asked me what it would take for him to be a Heaven Hill supplier, so I explained about the quality we want and how careful we have to be to make sure we don’t run into trouble with mold or too many broken kernels.  And how importaint the right moisture content is.  Moisture in the corn affects thet way we cook our mash; we won’t accept corn if the moisture content is over fourteen percent.

Without going into a lot of detail, the big point of it all is consistency.  Making sure we go through the same steps, the same way, time after time after time.  And since everyting starts with the raw materials, they have to be consistent, too.  My new farmer friend said he could handle all that, no problem, and I said we’d look forward to doing some business.

Knowing your key suppliers, understanding their problems and making sure they appreciate your needs as well, are all part of the Master Distiller’s job.  And being able to talk things over farmer-to-farmer makes it easier to do it.  So you see, you never know when something good will sneak up on you.”