Heaven Hill Distillery

August 14, 2019

See the rickhouse temperature changes that affect our whiskey

While we still practice time-honored methods of distilling and aging American Whiskey, we also look for innovative ways to use new tools and resources to better understand those traditional techniques.

In our never-ending quest to better understand the whiskey aging process and improve our tasting methodology, we embarked on a project to place temperature sensors in several of our rickhouses. Most Bourbon fans know that the temperatures in rickhouses vary quite a bit, with changes as much as 15° between floors. While we’ve been measuring these details manually for decades, the sensors record regular readings on the hour, every hour, and store the data for us to import and analyze alongside the experience and knowledge of our expert tasters.

To give whiskey fans an easy way to visualize what’s happening inside our rickhouses, we created a 3D heat map that explores the temperature variations our barrels experience. We’re investigating how these might demystify some of the finer points of flavor development, but this interactive feature certainly sheds new light on the complex, magical environment that is the open-rick warehouse.

We invite you to discover the details for yourself:

Explore the Heat Map