Lincoln County Process

Making charcoal at the Jack Daniel Distillery

The Lincoln County Process is a step used in producing almost all Tennessee whiskeys. The whiskey is filtered through—or steeped in—maple charcoal chips before going into the charred oak casks for aging. The process is named for Lincoln County, Tennessee, which was the location of the cave spring where in 1825 Alfred Eaton originated the method prior to that portion of Lincoln County becoming part of Moore County formed in 1871 (the cave spring is where Jack Daniel's distillery moved to in 1881). The Lincoln County Process is no longer used in that county where no distilleries operated after Prohibition until recently, (the new distilleries in Lincoln County are Benjamin Prichard's, which doesn't use the process for their Tennessee Whiskey and Southern Pride Distillery which doesn't offer a Tennessee Whiskey).

Origins

There is some dispute on the origins of the Lincoln County Process and it is possible that there is no single inventor. What is not disputed is that there were a great number of distillers in Lincoln County employing the Lincoln County Process (as early as 1825) prior to Jack Daniels as a company (initially the "Daniel & Call Company") being formed. Certainly each distillery had their own approach of how to make whiskey, but as a group, the licensed distillers of old Lincoln County adopted the maple charcoal mellowing process en masse, as well as aging in charred oak barrels. It is interesting to note that in the early 1820s and into the 1890s, there was significantly more whiskey being produced in the country in the northeast than in Tennessee and Kentucky, yet, the adoption of using charred oak barrels for aging began being recognized simultaneously in Kentucky and Tennessee in the early 1820s, with Tennesseans in Lincoln County adding the maple charcoal filtering as an extra step. Was it coincidence or a common experience that compelled these isolated frontiersmen to embrace charred wood for their whiskey? It is worthy to consider that New Orleans was the main point of commerce at that time for both Tennessee and Kentucky and that the use of charred oak barrels for American whiskey is attributed to the Tarascon brothers adoption of the method for their shop on Bourbon Street in New Orleans. Not only were tradesmen traveling down river to New Orleans and back, but in 1814 men of Kentucky and Tennessee gathered (2500 in Lincoln County) to march into the Battle of New Orleans. For thousands of years, many different cultures have used charcoal as a filter. There is evidence that both the Hindus and the Phoenicians were using charcoal to filter water around 400 BC.

1877 Meeting of Distillers of Tennessee Whiskey in Lynchburg. Note the volume of retail accounts attributed to each distillery.

For many years it was claimed that Alfred Eaton invented the process in 1825. The author (R. Christopher) of the 1896 article for “The Nashville American” (now published as “The Tennessean”) titled "Lynchburg and Moore County" clearly states that Alfred Eaton was the originator of the Lincoln County Process. The author of the article made special note to thank the Hon. James J. Bean for his assistance and recognized his “untiring and zealous” work for Lynchburg. It is hard to imagine a more accurate accounting of the origin of Tennessee Whiskey and the Lincoln County Process than this published account which is based on living memory at the time of the zenith of Jack Daniels onto the world stage. The Hon. James J. Bean served Tennessee as the State Treasurer and was the son of C. H. Bean whom you will note had the largest distribution of Lincoln County Process whiskey in 1877 out of Lincoln and Moore Counties according to the published report of the 1877 meeting of the 4th District Distillers (where C. H. Bean was appointed chairman of the group). A better source more familiar with the distilling business history of the area and notable as trustworthy does not exist.  However, The family of William "Billy" Pearson (1761-1844) claim to have documents that Billy sold his recipe for a "smooth sipping whiskey from a corn-mash, filtered through charcoal made from hard sugar-maple wood, and aged in Oak Barrels," to Eaton in 1825. According to the Pearson family, the original recipe was created by Mary Stout Jacocks (b.c. 1715 - d.c. 1816) and that it traveled with the family from New Jersey, to Virginia, and then Pennsylvania where Mary's daughter Tabitha Jacocks Pearson (1734 - 1811) taught the recipe to Billy. Billy took the family recipe to South Carolina and on August 7, 1791 he was kicked out of the Padgett's Creek Baptist Church for making whiskey. In 1812, Billy divorced his wife and moved with his four oldest children to a land he purchased not far from Lynchburg, TN in Bedford County. It is assumed that Billy farmed the land he purchased and continued to make whiskey until he sold his recipe along with the sugar maple charcoal filtration method to Eaton.

Recently it has been claimed that Nathan “Nearest” Green, the former slave, teacher of Jack Daniel and his eventual master distiller "was the one who decided to cut down sugar maple trees, create charcoal from it and filter his unaged whiskey [through it] before barreling." Proponents of Green as the inventor of the Lincoln County Process propose that he learned the practice of using charcoal to filter water from his ancestors and adapted it to whiskey. They claim that slaves brought the practice to the United States from West Africa where there is a long history of people "using charcoal to filter water and purify their foods" In this scenario, it is assumed that Green would have invented the Lincoln County Process sometime after his birth in 1820 and when he began working for Dan Call as a hired slave distiller around the 1850s.

Methods

Nearly every distillery creating Tennessee whiskey uses maple charcoal filtering, though the actual process for accomplishing this varies by company.

For Jack Daniel's, the charcoal used is created onsite from stacks (ricks) of two-by-two-inch (5 by 5 cm) sugar maple timbers. The timbers are primed with 140 proof (70% ABV) Jack Daniel's and then ignited under large hoods to prevent sparks. Once they reach the char state, the ricks are sprayed with water to prevent complete combustion. The resulting charcoal is then fed through a grinder to produce bean-size pellets that are packed into 10-foot (3.0 m) vats used to filter impurities from the 140 proof whiskey. The whiskey is then reduced with water to 125 proof (62.5%) for aging. The process was taught to Jack Daniel by Nearest Green, the namesake of Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey.

The George Dickel distillery uses deeper (13-foot [4.0 m]) vats and distills the whisky—the spelling used by Dickel—to 135 proof (67.5%). Dickel chills its whisky to 40 °F (4 °C) before it enters the vats and allows the liquid to fill the vats instead of trickling it through.

Nelson's Green Brier Distillery uses the Lincoln County Process to make its wheated First 108 Tennessee whiskey and its white whiskey.

Collier and McKeel, made in Nashville, uses a method that pumps the whiskey slowly through 10–13 feet (3–4 m) feet of sugar maple charcoal (instead of using gravity) made from trees cut by local sawmills.

Fugitives Tennessee Artisan Spirits uses wood harvested from old growth Lincoln County sugar maple trees grown on the Massey Farm in Lincoln County to create their proprietary charcoal. The Fugitives Lincoln County Process method takes Tennessee heritage grain Hickory Cane corn and Irish Barley distillate and steeps it slowly over 12 hours prior to aging in charred oak to make "Grandgousier Tennessee Whiskey"

Legal considerations

To be labeled as a straight whiskey, no flavoring or coloring compounds can be added to the spirit after the fermenting of the grain.

Some producers claim that according to a 1941 Internal Revenue Service ruling issued at the request of Jack Daniel Distillery, the Lincoln County Process is what distinguishes "Tennessee whiskey" from "bourbon". However, not all producers of products labeled as Tennessee whiskey use the process. (Specifically, it is not used in the production of Benjamin Prichard's Tennessee Whiskey.)

The term "Tennessee whiskey" does not actually have a legal definition in the U.S. Federal regulations that define the Standards of Identity for Distilled Spirits. The only legal definition of Tennessee whiskey in U.S. federally recognized legislation is the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which states only that Tennessee whiskey is "a straight Bourbon Whiskey authorized to be produced only in the State of Tennessee". This definition is also recognized in the law of Canada, which states that Tennessee whiskey must be "a straight Bourbon Whiskey produced in the State of Tennessee". None of these regulations requires the use of the Lincoln County filtering process (or any other filtering process).

On May 13, 2013, the governor of Tennessee signed House Bill 1084, requiring maple charcoal filtering to be used for products produced in the state labeling themselves as "Tennessee whiskey" (with a particular exception tailored to exempt Benjamin Prichard's) and including the existing requirements for bourbon. As federal law requires statements of origin on labels to be accurate, the Tennessee law effectively gives a firm definition to Tennessee whiskey.