Lexington, KY – Alltech’s Lexington Brewing and Distilling division is getting ready to make its 1,000th batch of Kentucky Bourbon Barrel Ale.
Since launching in 2006, Bourbon Barrel Ale has gone from rotating taps in local bars and restaurants, based on the product’s availability to a market that extends to 20 states and four foreign country (read this article about its 2011 launch in China).
Eight years later, its 1,000th batch will fill its 1 millionth case and is closing in on filling its 29 millionth 10 oz. snifter – the company’s preferred serving glass.
“At other breweries it’s a limited release, it’s allocated, but we chose to make it our everyday beer,” Lexington Brewing and Distilling Global Sales Manager Matt Cordle said . “To handle that and to do that, we’re almost insane. But we thought it was important being in bourbon country – that’s our niche in craft brewing.”
To achieve that, Cordle said the company made a conscious effort to make it a session beer – one that, according to BeerAdvocate.com, is meant to “allow a beer drinker to have multiple beers, within a reasonable time period or session, without overwhelming the senses or reaching inappropriate levels of intoxication.”
“We wanted it to be a sessionable beer that allows those bourbon flavors, the things that are attributed to bourbon, they don’t mask them. Not that those other darker beers aren’t great, we even folded with the demand did our own (barrel aged) coffee stout… but the big picture is we want to be positioned as the everyday bourbon barrel ale,” Cordle said. It’s sessionable, its drinkable and the flavors come through.”
While the company's original beers are Kentucky Ale and Kentucky Light (rebranded last year as Kentucky Kolsch), Cordle said that the Bourbon Barrel Ale – Kentucky Ale beer aged in a bourbon barrel for a minimum of six weeks – is their flagship outside of Kentucky, with up to 80 percent of their sales outside the commonwealth coming from the barrel-aged brew.
To keep up with that, the brewers also utilize a lot of transportation logistics in their jobs.