Around the Barrel - Transcript: Ep035: Darrell Davis
Darrell Davis: It is a vessel. There's a lot more to that vessel than just being a container that holds our whiskey. It is the number one ingredient, and that's why we own our own cooperage just because of the importance of that. And we want to be able to control that process in its entirety.
Lucas Hendrickson: If you look at it in its simplest form, a whiskey barrel is made up of two things, wood and steel, but so many improvements, changes, intentional innovations, and happy accidents have occurred over the centuries to bring us to what we recognize now as one of the primary components of Jack Daniel's Old Number 7 Tennessee Whiskey – that it's hard to overstate the importance of that marriage of wood and steel.
On this episode, we visit the modern day birthplace of those barrels, the Jack Daniel Cooperage in Trinity, Alabama. We walk and talk with Plant Manager Darrell Davis, who understands fully the importance of his team's efforts to one of the world's most popular spirits. And we break down the process of how to raise up the origin point for so much of Jack Daniel's color and flavor ... Around the Barrel.
Welcome back to Around the Barrel, the official podcast from the makers of Jack Daniel's. I'm your host, Lucas Hendrickson. So many stories have been told about the Jack Daniel Distillery's legendary home in Lynchburg, Tennessee, and about how every drop of that world famous liquid is generated there. That doesn't mean that every component that makes Jack, Jack, comes from there.
Roughly an hour and a half southwest of the distillery, as the trucks drive, resides a 60 acre site that produces more than a quarter million units of Jack Daniel's most important ingredient annually. 80% of the barrels into which every drop of Jack Daniel's flows in, and eventually out of, is produced at the Jack Daniel Cooperage.
The process of creating vessels for storage and transportation of liquids and other goods reaches back thousands of years. And by the time young Jasper Newton Daniel began learning about the process of making whiskey from distiller Nearest Green, barrel making was starting to make its way into a more industrial pursuit. Why, by 1896, the Jack Daniel Distillery was making eight barrels a day and had roughly 6,000 barrels maturing in its warehouses.
Within the walls of the 170,000 square-foot cooperage in Alabama, they're making significantly more than eight barrels a day. Plant Manager Darrell oversees the complex operations of the cooperage and walked the Around the Barrel team through the stages of taking the white oak that come from company-owned mills and sending them through drying, trimming, planing, joining, raising, steaming, shaping, toasting, charring, heading, hooping, drilling, and testing stages. The barrels come out the other side ready to be shipped northward to Lynchburg and sit filled for the next several years, crafting Tennessee whiskey. It's a complicated process honed over decades of experience and one undertaken by talented craftspeople from start to finish. And that team wouldn't have it any other way.
Darrell: Hi, I'm Darrell Davis. I'm the plant director here at Jack Daniel Cooperage. I'm originally from West Tennessee and I have worked for Jack Daniel's for seven years. I've been at this site, Jack Daniel Cooperage, For the last three.
Lucas: Darrell, welcome to Around the Barrel.
Darrell: Thank you.
Lucas: Thank you for letting us in. This is kind of our first on-site visit of the season and we are literally surrounded by barrels at the Jack Daniel Cooperage. Just give us, before we kind of dive into talking about what we just saw in our walkthrough on the plant, but give us a quick history of cooperage, of barrel raising, as opposed to barrel building. You know, we use some very specific terminology. It's certainly in a Jack Daniel's world, but what's the history of barrel making, not only in this country, but also for this company.
Darrell: Well, barrel making or coopering is old as in the industry. It's one of the oldest industries, really. Before plastics were created, society transported goods in wooden containers. After the fifties and sixties, when plastics became more, I guess, available, you started seeing the cooperage industry kind of go down. So now, if you're not in the spirit industry, which we are, or the wine industry, you're virtually not going to see or hear about coopering.
Lucas: Everyone we've talked to as part of this show, and walking us through the production of Jack Daniel's, notes the barrels as probably the key component – 60% of the flavor, all of the color, that kind of stuff. So the ability to control that process via the receptacle that it sits in for X number of years, it's incredibly important to the process. Talk about, as you've come to know more and more and more, obviously you're probably the leading expert as far as the production of the barrels themselves, but talk to the importance of' these vessels for Jack Daniels.
Darrell: So there's a lot more to that vessel than just being a container that holds our whiskey. It is the number one ingredient, and that's why we own our own cooperage, just because of the importance of that. And we want to be able to control that process in its entirety. That's something that's so important to Jack Daniel's that we don't, we don't want to give that to someone else and lose that control. Because you're absolutely correct. 60 to 70% of that taste of Jack Daniel's comes from the barrel and 100% of the color comes from the barrel. And that's very important to us
Lucas: Quickly run through the individual components of the barrels. For the layperson, glancing at a barrel, talk about that, the individual pieces that make that up, the biggest pieces of those barrels.
Darrell: Absolutely. So you can't have a barrel without a tree, the white oak. And we only use American white oak, or Quercus alba, which it's technically named. Those come from, really, the Tennessee Valley, Northern Mississippi, Northern Alabama, and Georgia, the north part of Georgia, all the way up to the Ohio Valley, as well. But for Jack Daniel Cooperage, we primarily get our logs from the Tennessee Valley area.
Where our process starts is the log. And we have very skilled, very trained log buyers that go out and purchase a high quality log. The log that they're looking for is right under a veneer quality, which goes into furniture, as you may know, but what they're looking for is a log that specifically will make a stave. And in the industry it's known as a stave log and the stave is our first component.
The name of our mills, we call them stave mills because their primary focus is to create staves. What they're doing there is cutting the log down. They're basically refining that log down to a usable material, which is called stave. They're using a quarter saw process and they're controlling the maxillary raise inside that white oak to a zero to 45 degree plane. And along with the tylosis cell that's inside the white oak, those create barriers that keep the whiskey inside the barrel.
Lucas: Is it essentially the primary kind of sealant component that makes white oak so valuable to this process?
Darrell: It's not necessarily a sealant. What happens is as that tree is growing, that tylosis cell forms in the vessels inside the wood and clogs up the vessel. So it's what's considered a closed grain wood. It is unique to white oak. That's one of the reasons we use white oak. The other reason is the sugars that's inside the white oak.The structure of the wood is another reason we use the white oak.
Lucas: The stave wood, which goes both into the vertical staves that form, but also that same wood is coming in and being made into the barrel heads as well. Correct?
Darrell: Absolutely. So we have the staves. It's our first component and the major components, cause it's the sides of the barrels. It's the largest component in our barrel. And then you have the heading material. And all of those come from our stave mills. Heading material inside our stave mills are considered a byproduct of the stave. So you will actually cut the staves down that makes up the heading. You have two heads per barrel. From there is the iron, the steel that holds all of that together, cause a hundred percent of our barrel is held together by pressure.
Lucas: So in the process of what's called raising a barrel. Well, you don't build barrels here. You raise them. Talk about where that kind of terminology came from.
Darrell:So raising the barrel is – it's almost like it's an act of nature. I mean, it is really an art to our process. That's one of the reasons that there's so much care that goes into our barrels, that we consider it raising a barrel. There is more importance to a barrel than just building it. So that's one of the ways that we see that we're raising up that barrel. Probably, more specifically, it's you're literally raising up staves to be held together by hoops and pressure. That's probably where it came from, but there is a little bit more behind it if you look at it from a care perspective, because we are building the number one ingredient to Jack Daniel's whiskey, and there's a lot of pride that goes into that.
Lucas: Yeah. How many individual phases does a finished stave, as it comes into the building – it's going through planing, it's going through grooving, it's going through shaping – how many parts of that process before you get to the point where somebody is selecting and starting the physical raising of the barrel?
Darrell: There's approximately six steps to the stave process before it's ready for the barrel raising process. First, it goes into our kiln process. What we're doing there is drying that out. Once it's dried, it goes through – we cut the wood to length. We take it from there and plane it down to a specific height or thickness. And then we start cutting defects off of it. If there's too much sap on the stave, we'll cut that off at our saw. If there's wormholes in it that we see, we'll cut those out as well.
So there's some importance to that process. That is a key process. We don't want to cut overcut. We don't want to undercut, because the machines that we have will only take off so much. So there's a skill level that we're looking for at that process.
From there you go into an inspection to make sure that we got everything. Once it's determined that we've got the proper quality of the stave, we will send it on down to our s, where we will cut the contour on the stave. That's where you're gonna get your concave and convex contour. That's the shape of the outside and the inside of the barrel. It's where you're going to get your joint on the stave so the sides of the staves are cut to the angle to make a 80 and three quarters in diameter barrel. So there's a lot of importance that goes into that process for the raising of the barrel.
Lucas: Okay. Then from the raising, it moves along the line to which aspect?
Darrell: From the raising, we go into a steam tunnel. We're drying it out for machining purposes and then we add the steam to it because we're really doing something that's unnatural to a stave or a piece of wood – we're bending and shaping it into that barrel shape.
One of the distinct components is the width of the stave after the stave molder. If you look at the ends of the stave, they're more narrow than the center of the staves. And once it goes through our toasting process and we put it through our hydraulic press, that we call our Windlass, it's held together by two temporary hoops that literally shape the barrel.
From there we go to a toasting process. We are actually the only large manufacturer, or large distillers, that toast our barrels. And that's one of the key components that give it the taste profile that we're looking for in Jack Daniel's whiskey. And then what that's doing is pulling the sugars out. And what that does is, we're adding a heat to it very slowly that's pulling the sugars out of the white oak – because that's really what white oak is.It's made up of sugars. It's cellulose. And we're pulling those sugars out to the surface of the wood for the whiskey as it penetrates it.
Lucas: So you have the toasting process and then you have a charring process, which is basically – they're done back-to-back, but how are the sugars then not completely charred off and destroyed as part of those in-between phases?
Darrell: Yep. So the toasting process is literally just slowly heating those sugars up or slowly heating the wood up and drawing the sugars in. The char – we have a very controlled process there. The char acts as a filter. It's used to take out some impurities in the whiskey and as the whiskey penetrates the wood, it picks up those sugars that we've brought to the surface and adds the vanilla notes, the cherry notes, then the other 197 notes that you'd find in our whiskey. It comes from the sugars and the wood. That's where you get the 60 to 70% taste that comes from the barrel. And 100% of the color comes from that wood as well.
Lucas: So post toasting and charring, then rolls into which?
Darrell: Then we add the – we simply cut the insides of the barrel for the mating part, which is the head. It's really the last piece that is put together from a wood standpoint. It goes down the line. Then it goes to our hooper stations, where we add the last four hoops to our barrel. Again, the barrel is completely held together by pressure.
From there, we get the bunghole drilled. The operator is looking for a wide enough stave for the bunghole to go in. We add our water and our air pressure for testing purposes. From there, it goes to our last inspection before it goes on the truck and we're looking for any leaks or any defects. And if there's something there that that inspector doesn't like, they'll tag it and it goes to our cooper pile where our coopers will replace staves or seal off any leak that may be with cedar spikes.
Lucas: On average, how long do you think it takes from when a shipment of staves hits the plant – or, you know, do you even just to sit in before it goes to the kiln process, before it comes into the big room itself – how long is that material sitting here before it is then shaped and raised and heading to Lynchburg?
Darrell: Coming from a mill, it could sit here for 30 days. Well, it actually could sit here till almost, sometimes, six months. It all depends on how our industry is. We're very held to seasonal availability for loggers to get into the woods. And it all starts back with the log, right? Throughout our process on the inside – I mean, if you just walk through our entire process, I mean, you're looking at a couple of hours of process time for a barrel. When you're building 1300 a day, you're looking a little bit more time.
So we are continually looking at ways to improve our processes and improve the optimization of the wood. That's one of the things that we've been very fortunate at this site, or inside Brown-Forman, really, to be able to do. And Brown-Forman's put a lot of resources to finding ways to optimize the wood that goes into our barrels cause it's a very key component to our product.
Lucas: This facility opened in 2014, correct?
Darrell: That is correct.
Lucas: Okay. Is there a significance to the location, north-central Alabama, about an hour and a half to Lynchburg - was the decision to put this building here – what was the importance of that?
Darrell: There was a little bit of a strategy that was behind the location. If you look at our suppliers, our top two suppliers, our internal mills. One's in Stevenson, Alabama, which is 95 miles from this location. The other is in Clifton, Tennessee, which is about 95 miles, or 92 miles to be specific, from this location. And then I think we're 88 miles from Lynchburg or somewhere there abouts, so there's, from a logistics standpoint, you have a perfect triangle approach to trucking the materials and the finished product back and forth to the site.
Lucas: How long have you worked here?
Darrell: I have been at this site for three years.We have been very fortunate to see this site grow. When I came here, we were producing around 800 barrels a day in an eight hour shift. We got up to about 13-1350 a day. I get the pleasure to work with a very smart team that I tell everyone I'm just the leader. I don't have to be the smartest person and they make it very easy for me not to be the smartest person in the room.
This team has done an excellent job on finding ways to improve our process. We've been able and willing to try new things. The four 10-hour shifts that we talked about is one of those things. Looking for parts departments on third shift, looking for open capacity and using open capacity was one of those ways that we added that. And then just through continuous improvement processes and increasing efficiencies is another way that we've increased the throughput in the site. Those are key. I mean, that's key.
Lucas: What's your favorite part about that process in that room? What do you think is the most challenging part of it? And then just what's your favorite to kind of watch or do?
Darrell: My favorite part – and this may be a little cliche or a little corny, but – my favorite part's the people. I'm a people person. I love talking to the people and learning about their families. This place is truly an extension of my family and I hope that's what they feel about theirs. You can't have a process like that without the people.
The actual process itself – each process has its own unique, I guess, challenge, if you would.There's not one piece of the process that I can pinpoint that is necessarily my favorite. You know, you get more oohs and aahs around the fires, around the chars, around the charring process.
Lucas: Guilty as charged!
Darrell: Yeah. There's something about fire that just draws people in, right?
Lucas: Sure. Exactly.
Darrell: Gnat to a flame, right? And then, again, the barrel raising piece is so important, but you can't have the barrel raising, you can't have the char, without the pre-manufacturing department. And you can't have that without the kilns. And I can't leave out assembly and finishing in that as well, or my material handlers. You can't have that without the maintenance. So it's all very important. I can't just simply pinpoint one that that's my favorite.
Lucas: Yeah. What do you think has been the biggest innovation in what you do here at the cooperage over the last, say, 10 years?
Darrell: The introduction of CNC machines to the barrel making process.
Lucas: CNC being?
Darrell: Computer numeric controlled.
Lucas: Okay.
Darrell: So what we saw on the floor was our stave molders, for instance, and our heading molders. What they're doing is they're taking a picture of the stave or the heading material that comes in to the machine and it's deciding where, or how, to cut that stave or piece of heading. That's been the most important piece of, I guess, technology that's been added to the cooperage industry in its entirety.
If you look at, our site specifically, we were the first site, the first cooperage to really be built in the bourbon industry in over 40 years. And with that came in a lot of technology that had been added to the industry. And then you look at our sister site in Louisville, they've taken our technology to the next level. And then, you know, who knows in the next 10 years, we're going to take it to another level. And that's key to our process and key to what we're doing here.
Lucas: I want to make sure that I'm getting the terminology, right, but the stave shaper, molder?
Darrell: Molder, yes.
Lucas: As you were describing it, the fascinating part to me on that was it can, that is a machine that can basically take any width of a stave and with, you know, instantaneous calculations essentially, shape it to the way and because every angle on those staves is going to necessarily need to be different depending on the width of the stave itself.
Darrell: That's correct.
Lucas: And so that I would think allows for so much more yield off of what what's coming into the building. There's virtually no wastage as part of that. That's always been the fascinating part to me is being able to use every piece of what can come into a building like this, and then have it all be what you need out of it in the long run. I mean, I have to think there's not a lot of, you know, variance in the capacity and tolerances of those barrels as they're finished because of the ability to get everything, to use everything, but not everything has to be uniform. That's the thing, not every piece of it, not every stave that goes into that barrel is gonna be the exact same width. There's going to be variance on that. That's going to add to the process.
Darrell: We're dealing, again, we're dealing with a product that is of Mother Nature, the wood. Every stave is almost like a fingerprint. It has its own fingerprint. I like to tell people that, you know, the logs, the white oak logs that we have, that we start with, they're like a snowflake. They're all different. Every one of them are different. And we have developed a process, or have implemented a process that considers those differences in the end component, or the component of making a stave. And then at the raising station, you know, the talent and the skill that comes in there is really putting a puzzle together, very fast.
Lucas: I would not want to compete with those guys in trying to put a jigsaw puzzle together! You see the patterns on it, and that's the only time.
Darrell: That's talent. That comes in overtime. That's not a place that we're going to start, you know, start you off at on day one.
Lucas: Right.
Darrell: You're going to work yourself up to that. A Little bit of competition that goes in between the barrel raisers and the pre-manufacturing department. Of course, they're right there together, so you can imagine the fun that they have about getting the the wood. And when defects do come up, they tend to play with each other and have a good time there. But there is a talent at every process, but the barrel raising is – there's a extreme talent there that you have to, I guess, mold and hone for a longer time,.
Lucas: At least as far as this building goes, you can't automate that. I mean, it's just time and talent and observational skills and knowing, and glancing off to your side and seeing the next thing that's going to fit into that raising process.
Darrell: Yeah. So that raising process is not an area that we would add a machine to do. Cause the skill that goes into that process itself is something the machine just cannot do.
Lucas: Yeah. Yeah. Were you a fan before you started this job? Were you a fan of the end product?
Darrell: So I'm from Tennessee originally, like I said. If you think of Tennessee, you think of really three things, or I think of three things: Elvis.
Lucas: Okay.
Darrell: Music.
Lucas: Okay.
Darrell: And Jack Daniels whiskey.
Lucas: Yep, yep.
Darrell: So was I a fan? Yes. Just being with the company for seven years, it's – I think everyone's really a fan of Jack Daniel's. Whether you drink or not, Jack Daniel's brand is huge. I mean, I can't tell you how many people that I, you know, being from the South, how many people that do drink and don't drink, but they've been to Jack Daniel's distillery for a tour.
Lucas: Right.
Darrell: And I think all of us are fans, but yes, I was a fan before and I'm a fan after. Actually my favorite brand is Jack Daniel's Rye, hands down.
Lucas: Rocks? No rocks? Neat?
Darrell: I like 'em on the rocks, heavy on the rocks. Absolutely.
Lucas: You've become a big customer of that since that grain bill hit the market.
Darrell: Absolutely.
Lucas: Well, Darrell, thank you for walking us around. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for creating the way that we can say thanks for joining us Around the Barrel.
Darrell: Absolutely.
Lucas: Around the Barrel is the official podcast of the Jack Daniel Distillery. Follow the podcast on the web at jackdaniels.com/podcast.
If you like what you hear, please subscribe, rate and review at Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you gather your on-demand audio. Always remember, with great podcasts and great whiskey, please enjoy responsibly. Join us next time for more conversations Around the Barrel.
Your friends at Jack Daniel’s remind you to drink responsibly. Jack Daniel’s and Old No. 7 are registered trademarks, Copyright 2020 Jack Daniel’s. Tennessee whiskey, 40% alcohol by volume, 80 proof, distilled and bottled by Jack Daniel Distillery, Lynchburg, Tennessee. Around the Barrel is intended for listeners 21 years of age and older.
