Joseph L. Beam

Photo of Joseph Beam, provided by Jim Beam Brands, Co. web site

“Mr. Joe”

Joseph L. Beam, better known as "Mr. Joe", was born in December of 1868 in Washington County, Kentucky. Mr. Joe was the son of Joseph M. Beam, a distiller, and was the great-grandson of family patriarch Jacob Beam. He was also Jim Beam’s first cousin. Joe entered the family distilling business at a very young age and learned the trade working at four different Bardstown distilleries between the ages of thirteen and thirty. In 1887, he married a local Bardstown girl named Katherine McGill. They had their first child in 1893 but went on to have a total of nine boys and no girls. Of those nine boys, seven of them, Elmo, Roy, Wilmer, Desmond, Everett, Otis, and Harry went on to work in the bourbon industry as Master Distillers.

During the beginning of prohibition, Joe moved most of his family out of the country to Juarez, Mexico, where, lacking the ability to produce bourbon, he served as the Master Distiller at a tequila plant. In the late 1920s, because of his family name, he and several of his sons were lured back to work at the A. Ph. Stitzel Distillery in Louisville. This was possible because Stizel was one of six distilleries that were open to the country during prohibition due to having been granted a license by the federal government to continue making whiskey for “medicinal purposes”.

After prohibition ended in 1933, Mr. Joe helped open the Heaven Hill Distillery. He was one of the five initial local Bardstown investors, including two of the Shapira brothers, as founders. Mr. Joe invested almost $9,000 (equivalent to $220,000 in 2025) as seed money to open the distillery. At the time, these five businessmen had to have had a lot of faith in Mr. Joe’s ability as a distiller because the new company had no still, no brands, no inventory, and no warehouses. They filled their first barrel of Bourbon on December 13, 1935, and in 1938, their first brand, known as Bourbon Falls, hit the shelves.

After two years to get the distillery open and another three more years waiting for the bourbon to age, Mr. Joe ran short of money. In fact, a total of three of the initial investors were cash-strapped at that point and had to be bought out or risk closing the distillery. Fortunately, the rest of Shapira brothers entered the picture to make five Shapiras in total as the sole owners of Heaven Hill. They bailed the business out with an infusion of an additional $20,000 in cash, which allowed the Heaven Hill Distillery to survive. The five brothers were David, Ed Gary, George, and Mose Shapira.

Mr. Joe's youngest son, Henry M. “Harry” Beam (1910-1971), remained on at Heaven Hill and became the Distillery’s first master distiller. Since that time, Earl Beam (1906-1993), Earl “Parker” Beam (1941-2017), and Craig Beam followed Harry as the only Master Distillers that Heaven Hill had until 2018. In total, for 83 years, Mr. Joe Beam and his kin were the only Master Distillers that Heaven Hill employed until Denny Potter was hired as Master Distiller in August of 2018.

After he was bought out by the Shapiras and he finished his tenure at Heaven Hill, "Mr. Joe" continued to move around to other distilleries. He and two of his other sons Roy M. Beam (1898-1959) and Desmond A. Beam (1905-1981) made Four Roses bourbon and whiskies at the Frankfort Distillery in Louisville.

Sadly, Joseph “Mr. Joe” Beam died in December 1956, leaving a legacy of familial bourbon expertise that cannot be argued and which is unlikely to ever be repeated.

Bourbon Falls was the original brand that was released by Heaven Hill while waiting for most of their inventory to mature.