Classic Content: Stephen Beam and the Birth of Yellowstone Bourbon

The birthplace of Yellowstone Bourbon. Courtesy of Limestone Branch Distillery

Eight years ago, I visited Limestone Branch Distillery, a new-ish operation that was making and selling flavored “moonshine” in a picture-esque setting. I got to sit down with distiller Stephen Beam to talk about future plans for his bourbon. He gifted me a jar of jalapeno moonshine and signed the label before I drove back home that day with my girlfriend. Today, his Yellowstone Bourbon brand, as well as Minor Case, is gaining traction in the whiskey world. It started here.

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In 1980, whiskey had been in a long, arduous drought; for years, it had been looked upon as a rough, low-quality drink.

“It wasn’t a good time for bourbon,” says Steve Beam, master distiller for Limestone Branch Distillery in Lebanon, Ky. “People had switched to wine in the ’70s. If they were drinking distilled spirits, it was vodka.”

But it was also a time when tastes were beginning to change. And a Wall Street Journal story about Maker’s Mark helped spark a rise in a brand that had been steadfastly holding its ground, marketing its product with a focus on quality.

Meanwhile, Steve Beam, a seventh-generation descendent of the distilling families that would ultimately give us Jim Beam, worked in horticulture. What’s more, he was allergic to oak. That’s not a great recipe for distilling bourbon, but in 1980, Beam had his eye on opening a distillery.

That vision bubbled for years in the mash tub of his mind, as he watched the bourbon industry first flounder and then flourish. Now, two years after opening Limestone Branch Distillery, located in Lebanon in the heart of Bourbon Country, his decades-old vision is coming into focus. Along with his brother Paul, Steve is slowly but surely building a distilling business, starting with a version of moonshine they call Sugar Shine.

The latest product line launched early this year: Moon Pie-flavored shine. That trio of flavored spirits – featuring chocolate, vanilla and banana flavors with the traditional southern snack cake brand – joins a line of products that includes 100-proof T. J. Pottinger Sugar Shine (made with 50 percent corn and 50 percent sugar cane), 80-proof Minor’s Revenge, an oak-barrel reserve, and several flavored moonshine products, from blackberry to cherry to jalapeno.

But sitting in a charred oak barrel inside the distillery is the first bourbon whiskey from Limestone Branch. Steve Beam’s vision not only has come to fruition with craft shine, but he’s about to become another Beam whiskey distiller. Within a year, he hopes, Limestone Branch will be turning about a barrel a day of bourbon and what he calls “experimental whiskeys.”

“We should have some bourbon coming out this fall,” the laid back Beam said as we sat on a deck behind the distillery, overlooking a pond. “But I don’t want to push it. Even if it’s good, we may let it sit a little bit longer.”

This is a man who has patiently waited for 30-plus years to get to this point – he has no interest in putting out a product that isn’t excellent. Heck, when your last name is Beam and you decide to become a distiller, there is plenty of built-in pressure. It’s like having the last name DiMaggio and deciding to become a baseball player.

“Absolutely,” he said, asked if he felt pressure to live up to his famous name. “You don’t want to disrespect the heritage.”

Beam actually comes from a long line of distilling on both sides of his family. Steve and Paul’s maternal great-grandfather, Joseph Washington Dant, began distilling sour mash whiskey in the 1830s, not far from where Limestone Branch now sits. Nearby, the brothers’ paternal great-grandfather, Minor Case Beam, was producing Old Trump and T.J. Pottinger brands of sour mash and rye.

Steve Beam’s bourbon distilling dream is now available nationwide. Courtesy of Limestone Branch Distillery

The proximity meant the two families would ultimately intermingle and inter-marry. In fact, one of Steve Beam’s grandmothers married a Dant, while the other married a Beam.

“They had a double wedding on the front porch,” Steve says.

The time wasn’t right in the early 1980s, so he went into horticulture. But he never gave up hope.

“I always felt like I would be in the distilling business,” he said, “later in life.”

Bourbon takes time to age, and barrels are expensive. Creating a line of craft moonshine was a good way to get into the business, so the brothers decided to honor a heritage that thrived during Prohibition, using a 150-gallon, hand-hammered, copper pot still. The T. J. Pottinger vaguely mimics the clear shine of the day, while the Revenge is a nod toward the rare, lightly oaked shine. (Bourbon barrels were routinely confiscated or destroyed by the feds in those days.)

The Beams use heirloom white corn grown just down the road instead of the traditional yellow, which Beam says costs double but adds quality and uniqueness to the flavor. The flavored shines are made with real fruit, not extract (Beam showed me a vat of strawberries ready for strawberry shine, and each one has a pound of fruit per gallon of shine, he says).

Of course, the term “moonshine” refers to the illegal liquor made by bootleggers by moonlight during Prohibition; that is part of the reason the Beams use the term “Sugar Shine,” but he insists the process isn’t much different. What’s different is that Prohibition moonshine was usually harsh and disgusting. Heck, the stuff could make you go blind if it wasn’t made properly. But modern craft “moonshine” is high-quality and drinkable.

“We do it as authentically as any moonshine,” Beam says. “You could take our stills and barrels and drop them over the hill there, and it would be just like the old days.”

He smiles, and then says, “But it’s a lot of hard work, so I wouldn’t want to do it in the woods.”

While the prize in Beam’s eye is bourbon and whiskey, he says they’ll always offer their shine products as a nod to Kentucky’s moonshine heritage. Meanwhile, there’s a light rye bourbon aging just 100 or so feet away from the deck where we’re chatting. He says it will have the usual rye spice and caramel tones, and he’s looking forward to the finished product.

“When it went in[to the barrel], it tasted like rye bread,” he said.

He said they’ll be experimenting with different “oak processes” and likely making a blue corn bourbon as well. Long term, he hopes to redevelop the entire two-and-a-half-acre plot – which once was the cornfield that provided the heirloom corn – into an attraction where visitors can picnic, sip Limestone Branch products and enjoy paddle-boating on the lake that sits within eyeshot of the back deck. Currently, Limestone Branch offers tours, tastings and products, as well as a hallway with a mini distilling museum.

More than anything, Beam wants to honor his family’s heritage.

“We were the seventh generation,” he says. “My dad worked in distilling for a while, but if we hadn’t been in the business, it would have broken the chain, and it just didn’t seem right. It’s about returning the family to the heritage.”

This post was first published by the now-defunct Insider Louisville.