Earl Beam

As is common in any distilling venture, money was tight before their Bourbon had time to age, and Park Beam was eventually asked to find employment elsewhere. Both Earl and Carl were young and came cheap, so they were able to continue being employed by Beam. Then, as the Jim Beam brand became more and more in demand, Carl ran the first shift and was eventually appointed the title of Master Distiller, while Earl was named Assistant Master Distiller and ran the second shift. Each brother contributed heavily to the quantity of production and the quality of the product. Even so, in 1946, Earl made the decision to leave Jim Beam to become the Master Distiller at Heaven Hill. At that time, he was only the second Master Distiller in the history of the Heaven Hill Distillery.

When Earl Beam joined Heaven Hill, he brought with him many years of experience. As the Master of the mash tubs, Earl Beam was responsible for all the yeasting, mashing, and distilling operations. A large part of that job was the specialized work of making and propagating a particular strain of proprietary jug yeast, which is one of the most important steps in producing any whiskey consistently. It requires the personal attention and utmost care of the Master Distiller. The jug yeast is then worked up into a mash of malted barley to produce the day yeast for fermenting. “The strain of a yeast is the difference between good whiskey and poor whiskey,” Earl would commonly say, “The big distilleries use laboratory yeast and keep it pure by artificial methods, but Heaven Hill uses its own strain”.

As is common in the bourbon industry, and although competition is brutal and banter is commonplace, when Earl left his family’s namesake distillery, there was no animosity between the brothers. In fact, Carl told Earl that he’d “be glad to do anything he could to help get things started over there.” The two companies, just 20 miles apart, have remained congenial over the years, and in fact have often shared industry scuttlebutt and even traded parts and machinery.

In times past, the two companies have deliberately purchased the same equipment, including hammer mills, stills, and bottling lines, to make parts exchanges easier. At one time, both companies had the same milling equipment, so that if one distillery had a problem and they needed a fan, a gear, a bearing, or a motor, they could source it from their “competitor”. The mash cooker drives were the same, and the companies have even shared barrels with one another while one distillery was waiting for a delayed shipment from the stave company.

In 1955, Heaven Hill, under Earl’s supervision. filled its 500,000th barrel of bourbon. Then in 1957, Earl introduced what would go on to become Heaven Hill’s Flagship brand in Evan Williams. The line was named after the very first licensed distiller in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, and the company even went so far as to purchase the “K. S. P. #1” plant number from Williams’ heirs. Since then, Evan Williams has gone on to become the world’s second-best-selling bourbon behind only cousin Jim Beam’s flagship White Label. In 1960, Earl also brought his son Parker Beam to Heaven Hill as the Distillery Production Manager. Parker would go on to become one of the greatest Master Distillers the bourbon industry has ever had.

Earl Beam retired in 1975 after nearly three decades spent at Heaven Hill. He died in Bardstown in 1993 at the age of 87 and was inducted posthumously into the Kentucky Bourbon Hall of Fame in 2003, in only its third class of inductees ever. Earl Beam became only the 4th of 11 Beam family members to be inducted into the Bourbon Hall of Fame, behind only Parker Beam, Booker Noe, and Jim Beam himself.