SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Most bourbon comes from Kentucky. The state is home to more than 100 distilleries, and naturally, some are trying to get an edge on their competition. Hannah Saad, with member station WKMS, reports on one distillery setting itself apart by setting its products afloat.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: All right. Watch your head as we come on in.
HANNAH SAAD, BYLINE: On the shores of the Mississippi River on Kentucky's western border sits the only two floating barrel houses in the country. Sunlight peeks through small windows inside of the Ingram Distillery's two-story metal barge. Big barrels are stacked seven high left and right as you walk through. CEO Hank Ingram says they recently opened the barges to the public for a glimpse at the unique space.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Now, this is a red oak that we have down here.
SAAD: Ingram got the barge idea a few years ago after hearing tales of how 19th century Kentucky distillers would ship their whiskies in barrels on flat boats down to larger ports like New Orleans. That trek typically took months.
HANK INGRAM: By the time they get to New Orleans, open this barrel up, they realized pretty quickly this whiskey has taken on a whole new flavor than what they had put into the barrel originally.
SAAD: That idea enticed him, and he wanted to see if he could put a 21st-century spin on it. So his company ran a six-month experiment, comparing barrels that were aged on land to those aged on the river.
INGRAM: What we noticed is there was this softness and just more character on the barrels that were on barges than the barrels that were on land.
SAAD: Distillers have a strict federal set of requirements they have to follow when making bourbon. That includes aging it in a new charred oak barrel. Most companies store their barrels in warehouses with wood floors, but there's not much stopping distilleries from trying out new storage locations.
BRAD BERRON: I find it really encouraging that people are out there taking a very constrained category and finding ways to create brilliant new flavors out of it.
SAAD: That's Brad Berron, a chemical engineer who researches spirits at the University of Kentucky. During the bourbon aging process, water and ethanol moves in and out of the barrel's curved slats, extracting flavors from the wood. In high humidity areas like those on and near rivers, Berron says, less water tends to evaporate from inside the barrel, leaving behind more liquid with more wood influences.
BERRON: So you're going to more or less lower the concentration of the alcohol in that barrel, and oftentimes that leads to really interesting flavors coming in.
SAAD: Though the topic hasn't been heavily researched, Ingram says the movement of the mighty Mississippi underneath the floating barrel house also influences the final products.
INGRAM: The motion of the river keeps the barrels agitated ever so slightly. That allows for the whiskey to work itself against the charred surface of the barrel. That's more barrel contact, therefore, more barrel influence.
SAAD: Ingram says there's not a lot that hasn't already been tried in the whiskey and bourbon making space. But he says his barge experiment on the Mississippi River shows there's still room for innovation and more flavors.
For NPR News, I'm Hannah Saad in Columbus, Kentucky.
DETROW: (SOUNDBITE OF MUDDY WATERS SONG, "THE SAME THING") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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